Chapter 4.11.4B: Oct 26, 2010 Mega Spike

It was proclaimed with great fan fare that Ontario wind produced a record amount of power. 

Ontario wind farms set power record; wind powered 900,000 homes

TORONTO

— The Independent Electricity System Operator says wind output in Ontario reached new highs this week.

Electricity generation from Ontario’s commercial wind farms hit 24,022 megawatt hours on Wednesday.

Wind power provided almost six per cent of the province’s electricity needs and powered nearly 900,000 homes on Wednesday.

Spokesman Bruce Campbell says wind power is an important contributor to Ontario’s supply mix.

On Oct. 26, wind generators produced 1,056 megawatts of electricity — a new record for hourly output.

The IESO says that represents a capacity factor of 91 per cent and is more power than is produced by a large nuclear generator.

Impressive!  Sure makes the wind industry took fantastic doesn’t it.  Let’s replace all our nuke plants with wind turbines!  We get 91% efficiency!

Not.

Recall in the news about that enormous “weather bomb” that bombed out?  Yes, indeed it was a huge low pressure system that moved through, causing some damage on its route through Southern Ontario. 

It was that storm that gave us the wind.  How many times a year do we get such storms?  One’s this size?  It was a rare event.  Likely be some time before this power production is broken in the future.  Lots more turbines need.  And, yes that is also why it was a record production.  This year is the largest number of turbines in operation.  So, as Homer says, Duh!

So let’s have a look at this “weather bomb” and how much output was produced.

This is the total wind production for the month of Oct 2010 from the 1st to the 29th.  Definitely a windy month, and that “weather bomb” certainly produced a large spike.

This is the percent of name plate for the entire fleet for the month:

Oh, yes, we briefly hit 91%.  Let’s have a closer look at those days.

Interesting tidbit of information that left out of that article.  That 91% happened at 10pm when no one needed the extra power.  October is a month of low consumption to begin with.

Here’s the percent name plate:

Here are the actual numbers:

Date Hour Output Capacity % NP
25-Oct 1 457 1144 40%
25-Oct 2 475 1147 41%
25-Oct 3 535 1147 47%
25-Oct 4 507 1146 44%
25-Oct 5 472 1142 41%
25-Oct 6 434 1140 38%
25-Oct 7 487 1142 43%
25-Oct 8 469 1145 41%
25-Oct 9 425 1144 37%
25-Oct 10 410 1143 36%
25-Oct 11 497 1149 43%
25-Oct 12 525 1151 46%
25-Oct 13 546 1150 47%
25-Oct 14 579 1146 51%
25-Oct 15 518 1141 45%
25-Oct 16 464 1134 41%
25-Oct 17 417 1134 37%
25-Oct 18 417 1144 36%
25-Oct 19 476 1152 41%
25-Oct 20 490 1151 43%
25-Oct 21 582 1155 50%
25-Oct 22 557 1152 48%
25-Oct 23 553 1154 48%
25-Oct 24 565 1156 49%
26-Oct 1 589 1153 51%
26-Oct 2 599 1153 52%
26-Oct 3 611 1155 53%
26-Oct 4 590 1156 51%
26-Oct 5 643 1155 56%
26-Oct 6 696 1155 60%
26-Oct 7 781 1156 68%
26-Oct 8 834 1151 72%
26-Oct 9 849 1144 74%
26-Oct 10 852 1144 74%
26-Oct 11 872 1145 76%
26-Oct 12 919 1148 80%
26-Oct 13 905 1145 79%
26-Oct 14 899 1154 78%
26-Oct 15 942 1158 81%
26-Oct 16 909 1159 78%
26-Oct 17 921 1156 80%
26-Oct 18 1001 1157 87%
26-Oct 19 1040 1156 90%
26-Oct 20 1056 1158 91%
26-Oct 21 1052 1159 91%
26-Oct 22 1052 1159 91%
26-Oct 23 1032 1159 89%
26-Oct 24 1009 1159 87%
27-Oct 1 1028 1159 89%
27-Oct 2 966 1158 83%
27-Oct 3 971 1159 84%
27-Oct 4 957 1159 83%
27-Oct 5 897 1126 80%
27-Oct 6 985 1159 85%
27-Oct 7 1019 1158 88%
27-Oct 8 1036 1162 89%
27-Oct 9 1018 1164 87%
27-Oct 10 1022 1162 88%
27-Oct 11 997 1165 86%
27-Oct 12 989 1163 85%
27-Oct 13 1022 1163 88%
27-Oct 14 1017 1164 87%
27-Oct 15 996 1166 85%
27-Oct 16 987 1167 85%
27-Oct 17 1013 1169 87%
27-Oct 18 1016 1168 87%
27-Oct 19 1019 1166 87%
27-Oct 20 1025 1166 88%
27-Oct 21 1015 1166 87%
27-Oct 22 1003 1166 86%
27-Oct 23 1004 1166 86%
27-Oct 24 1020 1166 87%

 

Grand total of 3 hours at 91%, at the end of the day.  Trouble is, we didn’t need any of that power.  Since we were exporting power before the storm, excess wind from the storm wasn’t needed, especially in the middle of the night, and off it went to the US.

That will be proven so once export numbers are obtained.

What is interesting is the IESO making great fan fare about getting all this wind from a huge low pressure system that dumped 24 inches of snow in Winnipeg and millions in damage from tornadoes in the US.

But what of that 900,000 homes?   Using the maximum hour output of 1056 megawatts, that’s 0.85kWs per home, which averaged for the day at 20kWh.   The average home uses 35kWh per day.  So they are likely using a value for the hour based on the time of day, which is when people use power least heading off to bed.  But of course that wind didn’t power 900,000 homes in Ontario, but 900,000 homes in Ohio.

That “weather bomb” period produced some 100,032MWh of power between the 24th and the 29th of October.  At $140/MWh for wind, that’s some $14 million dollars from your bills paid for those Ohio homes.

2 Responses to Chapter 4.11.4B: Oct 26, 2010 Mega Spike

  1. Belinda says:

    You might want to change your title… it refers to July, not October.

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