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.