ARE WE TAKING WIND DROUGHTS SERIOUSLY ENOUGH?
Congratulations to Paul McArdle for an early warning
Paul McArdle was tracking the progress of wind penetration in the South-Eastern Australian grid. He described how peak wind production grew every year, but “there are still some times when wind output is close to nil. A challenge to be addressed as penetration increases.”
He noted that these developments “Might lead to significant implications if storage does not arrive ‘on time and on budget’.”
The source is WattClarity, April 16, 2015 “Wind Peak Production climbs – linearly over 5 successive summers.”
Has storage turned up on time? Apparently not in Britain and Germany where they are circling the drain, and the status of Britain as the workshop of the world is a distant memory. They are demonstrating that there is no sustainable future for industrial nations on the back of wind and solar power.
https://open.substack.com/pub/rafechampion/p/lessons-from-the-world-wind-leaders
The meteorologists never bothered to issue wind drought warnings, but the risk was revealed over a decade ago when independent Australian observers described severe wind droughts, which can persist for days, when high-pressure systems linger over South Eastern Australia.
https://open.substack.com/pub/rafechampion/p/we-have-to-talk-about-wind-droughts
Wind droughts might have been investigated in the 1990s when windmills started to be attached to the Australian grid and certainly before 2001 when the Howard government legislated a renewable energy target.
Think about it. Would you go farming without checking the rainfall before you start tilling and planting or indeed before you purchase the property?
The wind supply and especially the reliability of supply is to wind farming as rainfall is to growing pasture and crops.
The Goyder Line was drawn on the map of South Australia to warn prospective farmers about the risk of droughts north of the line. Similar lines drawn on the map of the world would have warned wind farmers away from Australia, North America, Europe, and possibly the rest of the world.
That would have saved the trillions that have been spent around the world to build mountains of debt to get more expensive and less secure power with massive environmental damage.
SO WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?
Can either of the major parties suggest a way to pursue net zero, and keep the lights on, without propping up the existing coal burners until nuclear power is on deck?