It’s No Joke: Australia’s Electricity Supply Now Depends On Wind & Cloud Forecasts

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Straight choice: ideology versus reliability.

If you’re looking for the reason why wind power has never worked and never will? Here it is: THE WEATHER.

If you’re looking to wreck a grid and send power prices into orbit, then pin your power hopes to mother nature’s whims. South Australia did; it suffers the world’s highest retail power prices and became the butt of international jokes for a series of weather-related mass blackouts.

Looking for an example? Take a scan of what’s depicted above.

That’s the ‘performance’ of Australia’s wind power fleet during April – courtesy of Aneroid Energy

Spread from Far North Queensland, across the ranges of NSW, all over Victoria, Northern Tasmania and across South Australia its 6,960 MW of capacity routinely delivers just a trickle of that.

Collapses of over 3,000 MW or more that occur over the space of a couple of hours are routine, as are rapid surges of equal magnitude…