This NemWatch screenshot shows how wind is completely useless at times. Unless we shut the Nation down during wind droughts we need to keep a full complement of reliable generation ready to go at any time.
Australia runs on coal. See how South Australia is pounding their gas plants – even firing up some diesel to cope with the morning rush. Comparing their AEMO demand with NemWatch shows they must be importing about 200MW from Victoria.
Much the same 2 hours later still only 200MW for all Oz.
10.30am now only 161MW. Where has the wind gone?
And at 15:30 (NEM time) it’s a massive 120MW and falling by the minute.
(By the way Warwick are you aware you can get a clean screen shot of the graph by using the “save” button below it – saves a time captioned png file)
3.40PM 20July National Wind 113 MW including SA 2 MW (Tas the largest at 55MW)
5 minutes later SA turned on the diesel generators -8MW , 1238MW gas Wind now 4MW
7.55PM something wrong with the measurements NSW shows 2 MW for small solar and Qld 1 MW but it has been dark for 2 hrs. Maybe some are cheating and running diesels to get the feed in tariff for some it is 70c/kWhr in NSW in Qld it is 55c/kWhr. I recall in Spain some large Solar plants were shining lights joined to the grid onto the solar panels and getting the free money from the feed in tariff,