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GOOD MONTHS
In the chapter on each wind farm’s performance you will have noticed that 3 of them in the winter months had a high-end uptick in output, Port Alma, Port Burwell and to some extent Wolfe Island. This chapter will look at when those high-end performance in the Hourly Capacity Factor (HCF) occurred. Where they times the power was needed? What was the likely cause of that uptick?
This is the percent of the time in each year where the output was 90% or better:
Port Alma is the best case example of the three, so in the next subchapter we will look at the specific hours for that location where the HFC was 90% or more for this location. You will see that the number of good HCF hours does not correspond with the demand. If it’s the best, the rest were worse.
This chart shows the total number of hours where the HCF was 90% or better and demand was within 10% of peak:
| Winter | Spring | Summer | Fall | |
| AMARANTH | 7 | 13 | 0 | 5 |
| KINGSBRIDGE | 155 | 156 | 1 | 112 |
| PORT ALMA | 101 | 122 | 6 | 71 |
| PORT BURWELL | 122 | 98 | 0 | 81 |
| PRINCEFARM | 41 | 98 | 3 | 78 |
| RIPLEY SOUTH | 34 | 43 | 0 | 3 |
| UNDERWOODWGS | 8 | 24 | 0 | 25 |
| WOLFE ISLAND | 34 | 14 | 0 | 17 |
As a percent of total operating hours per season:
| Winter | Spring | Summer | Fall | |
| AMARANTH | 0.081% | 0.118% | 0.000% | 0.057% |
| KINGSBRIDGE | 1.789% | 1.413% | 0.009% | 1.282% |
| PORT ALMA | 2.338% | 2.763% | 0.112% | 1.625% |
| PORT BURWELL | 1.408% | 1.075% | 0.000% | 0.927% |
| PRINCEFARM | 0.473% | 1.110% | 0.034% | 0.994% |
| RIPLEY SOUTH | 0.525% | 0.649% | 0.000% | 0.069% |
| UNDERWOODWGS | 0.185% | 0.543% | 0.000% | 1.120% |
| WOLFE ISLAND | 1.574% | 0.526% | 0.000% | 0.778% |
As a percent of hours above 10% peak demand:
| Winter | Spring | Summer | Fall | |
| AMARANTH | 0.6% | 0.6% | 0.0% | 0.3% |
| KINGSBRIDGE | 13.5% | 7.1% | 0.1% | 6.9% |
| PORT ALMA | 17.5% | 14.9% | 1.6% | 10.3% |
| PORT BURWELL | 10.6% | 5.3% | 0.0% | 5.0% |
| PRINCEFARM | 3.6% | 5.4% | 0.5% | 5.5% |
| RIPLEY SOUTH | 3.8% | 2.8% | 0.0% | 0.4% |
| UNDERWOODWGS | 1.4% | 2.9% | 0.0% | 5.8% |
| WOLFE ISLAND | 10.7% | 2.4% | 0.0% | 4.0% |
Port Alma has the best performance as 17% of the time in the Winter, when demand was within 10% of peak, did the wind blow 90% or better of name plate.
BAD MONTHS
On the reverse side of the “good” months are the bad month which is when there were hours of no output. The total percent of time all projects that were at zero output per year looks like this:
This chart shows the percent of the time each project’s output was nothing:
| 2006 | 2007 | |||||||
| Season | W | S | S | F | W | S | S | F |
| AMARANTH | 40% | 11% | 19% | 12% | 18% | 10% | 18% | 9% |
| KINGSBRIDGE | 8% | 24% | 31% | 19% | 13% | 21% | 34% | 14% |
| PORT ALMA | ||||||||
| PORT BURWELL | 6% | 24% | 21% | 12% | 13% | 14% | 24% | 20% |
| PRINCEFARM | 12% | 15% | 9% | 8% | 18% | 6% | ||
| RIPLEY SOUTH | 6% | |||||||
| UNDERWOODWGS | ||||||||
| WOLFE ISLAND | ||||||||
| 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | |||||||||
| Season | W | S | S | F | W | S | S | F | W | S | S |
| AMA. | 9% | 6% | 40% | 13% | 10% | 8% | 17% | 13% | 15% | 5% | 4% |
| KING. | 10% | 15% | 32% | 17% | 14% | 16% | 38% | 24% | 20% | 16% | 24% |
| P ALMA. | 7% | 30% | 6% | 6% | 7% | 15% | 9% | 8% | 5% | 11% | |
| P BUR. | 12% | 10% | 16% | 12% | 9% | 14% | 21% | 15% | 16% | 10% | 15% |
| PRIN. | 9% | 9% | 14% | 7% | 11% | 8% | 13% | 15% | 8% | 8% | 14% |
| RIPL. | 3% | 5% | 11% | 6% | 4% | 6% | 15% | 12% | 9% | 4% | 8% |
| UNDER. | 7% | 2% | 16% | 13% | 29% | 22% | 14% | 17% | 26% | ||
| WI | 9% | 14% | 19% | 12% | 11% | 10% | 13% | ||||
This is what it looks like graphically:
Clearly summers are the worst for percent time of zero output. Kingsbridge shows the most number of those hours. Thus the next subchapter will focus on that location.
Understand that wind producers only get paid when the wind blows. When there is no output they don’t get a dime. But when it does blow they are guarrenteed a rate regardless of the spot price at the hour of production.
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