WIND PRODUCTION IN ONTARIO

The Liberal Government, through it's Green Energy Act, wants more wind turbines in Ontario, and ramming through as many as it can as fast as it can. When a wind farm is proposed, the wind operator will claim that so many megawatts of capacity are going to be installed.

That number they give is the name plate capacity of all the turbines combined. That is, a 1.5mW turbine has a capacity of 1.5 megaWatts. That's the name plate. But it is a lie to claim that is what the turbines will produce. It gets you thinking that that number, the "capacity" is what they will deliver. They don't want you to know what the real output is.

When pressed, they will claim that the output from wind is 27% of name plate for Ontario, referred to as the "capacity value".

Now what does that mean to you? Do you get the impression that most of the time wind production is 27% of name plate? That most production is around that 27% most of the time? Well, if that is what you think, you are quite wrong, and shows how grossly misleading that 27% is. Again, a tactic to make you think wind power is viable.

In a normal distribution curve, a bell curve, the average is the apex of the top of the bell curve. Thus the average would also be the most number of hours. All values on either side are evenly distributed around that average. That means that the number of hours at 40% name plate would be the same as the number of hours at 14%.

In a normal distribution curve another number is vital to know, and that's the Standard Deviation. The SD is the measure of the width of the bottom of the curve. The smaller the SD the narrower the bottom of the bell, the larger the wider the bottom. The SD is added and subtracted from the average to get the upper and lower standard deviations. 68% of all values fall within the USD and LSD. Values above and below the second Standard Deviation are considered rare. 95% of all values fall inside the second Standard Deviation.

Not once have I ever seen the Standard Deviation mentioned in wind output, even though it is a vital number to know.

There is only one way to find out what is actually going on since the wind industry is unwilling to share the real numbers with the public.

I downloaded the hourly data from 11-apr-2010 to 8-jul-2010 for the entire fleet of wind turbines in Ontario, this is what I get when I plot the number of hours at each percent name plate:



The area under the graph is the total hours within that date range. Notice how the plot is skewed to the lower percents of name plate. That is, more hours wind output is at the lower ends of percent name plate.

Things change if the bell shape is skewed. You can see the graph shows significant skewness. In fact, it is very significant. The skewness of that graph was 1.28. Skewness is zero in a normal distribution. When skewed, the average loses all meaning. The important number on a skewed distribution is the median.

The median is 13% of name plate, half the average. In a skewed graph the Standard Deviation is added and subtracted from the median, not the average. The Standard Deviation is huge, 28%. That means the upper SD is 41% name plate. Thus 68% of all the hourly output numbers are below 41% name plate. The upper second SD is 69%, making any hits above that rare events.

Hence average in a skewed plot is completely meaningless, and not the most number of hours. In fact, only 1.3% of the hours is output at 27%. Thus the capacity factor should not be the average but should be the median, a more physically realistic measure of output.

Since the skewness makes the median almost half the average, then I would suspect that the actual capacity value is not 27% but in fact somewhere between 13 and 15% of name plate.

This is the table of data that gives that graph.

% Name plate	Hours	% of Total	Total Hours: 2136	Accum % total
0%	30	1.4%	30	1%
1%	48	2.2%	78	4%
2%	49	2.3%	127	6%
3%	61	2.9%	188	9%
4%	48	2.2%	236	11%
5%	75	3.5%	311	15%
6%	69	3.2%	380	18%
7%	77	3.6%	457	21%
8%	76	3.6%	533	25%
9%	61	2.9%	594	28%
10%	72	3.4%	666	31%
11%	53	2.5%	719	34%
12%	70	3.3%	789	37%
13%	59	2.8%	848	40%
14%	66	3.1%	914	43%
15%	54	2.5%	968	45%
16%	54	2.5%	1022	48%
17%	37	1.7%	1059	50%
18%	37	1.7%	1096	51%
19%	36	1.7%	1132	53%
20%	62	2.9%	1194	56%
21%	32	1.5%	1226	57%
22%	40	1.9%	1266	59%
23%	37	1.7%	1303	61%
24%	41	1.9%	1344	63%
25%	41	1.9%	1385	65%
26%	35	1.6%	1420	66%
27%	28	1.3%	1448	68%
28%	29	1.4%	1477	69%
29%	27	1.3%	1504	70%
30%	34	1.6%	1538	72%
31%	26	1.2%	1564	73%
32%	19	0.9%	1583	74%
33%	22	1.0%	1605	75%
34%	27	1.3%	1632	76%
35%	15	0.7%	1647	77%
36%	18	0.8%	1665	78%
37%	19	0.9%	1684	79%
38%	17	0.8%	1701	80%
39%	23	1.1%	1724	81%
40%	18	0.8%	1742	82%
41%	21	1.0%	1763	83%
42%	18	0.8%	1781	83%
43%	17	0.8%	1798	84%
44%	14	0.7%	1812	85%
45%	18	0.8%	1830	86%
46%	16	0.7%	1846	86%
47%	17	0.8%	1863	87%
48%	19	0.9%	1882	88%
49%	16	0.7%	1898	89%
50%	12	0.6%	1910	89%
51%	11	0.5%	1921	90%
52%	12	0.6%	1933	90%
53%	7	0.3%	1940	91%
54%	14	0.7%	1954	91%
55%	14	0.7%	1968	92%
56%	10	0.5%	1978	93%
57%	10	0.5%	1988	93%
58%	11	0.5%	1999	94%
59%	9	0.4%	2008	94%
60%	6	0.3%	2014	94%
61%	10	0.5%	2024	95%
62%	4	0.2%	2028	95%
63%	6	0.3%	2034	95%
64%	6	0.3%	2040	96%
65%	10	0.5%	2050	96%
66%	9	0.4%	2059	96%
67%	7	0.3%	2066	97%
68%	7	0.3%	2073	97%
69%	6	0.3%	2079	97%
70%	5	0.2%	2084	98%
71%	2	0.1%	2086	98%
72%	2	0.1%	2088	98%
73%	5	0.2%	2093	98%
74%	5	0.2%	2098	98%
75%	7	0.3%	2105	99%
76%	2	0.1%	2107	99%
77%	4	0.2%	2111	99%
78%	2	0.1%	2113	99%
79%	3	0.1%	2116	99%
80%	4	0.2%	2120	99%
81%	0	0.0%	2120	99%
82%	2	0.1%	2122	99%
83%	5	0.2%	2127	100%
84%	3	0.1%	2130	100%
85%	2	0.1%	2132	100%
86%	1	0.0%	2133	100%
87%	2	0.1%	2135	100%
88%	1	0.0%	2136	100%
89%	0	0.0%	2136	100%
90%	0	0.0%	2136	100%
91%	0	0.0%	2136	100%
92%	0	0.0%	2136	100%
93%	0	0.0%	2136	100%
94%	0	0.0%	2136	100%
95%	0	0.0%	2136	100%
96%	0	0.0%	2136	100%
97%	0	0.0%	2136	100%
98%	0	0.0%	2136	100%
99%	0	0.0%	2136	100%
100%	0	0.0%	2136	100%

Notice the accumulative percent of hours in the right column. Go to the 50% mark. Then read what the name plate percent is. This means that 50% of the time output is less than 18% of name plate!

So the claim of wind output from capacity is wrong, they never produce at capacity. Wind providers will claim that no source of power produces at 100% name plate. This is true. But guess what? Our nuke plants run at between 94 and 98% name plate, and they do that 24/7. Far cry from the less than 18% fifty percent of the time.

How would you like if your car got mileage at less than 18% of it's rated mileage 50% of the time?
Their fall back number, the capacity value, of 27% is also grossly misleading as well as it does not tell you how many hours the production is at each name plate.

The entire public is badly misinformed, deliberately, by the wind industry. This is basic high school statistics. Those in the industry must know this, or they are incompetent. I doubt they are that. This means the wind industry is deliberately keeping the most important numbers of production from public view. The reason why is simple, it would expose how pathetic wind output really is.

The hourly production with the median, skewness and Standard Deviation is crucial to know, deliberately leaving this out is a deliberate attempt to mislead the public.

And you are paying for that deception in your electrical bills.

Time to put an end to this.