Sunday 4 December 2011

Hide the decline



Interested in how much power wind farms are generating each day? Have a gander over here then. In the spirit of Michael Mann and the tricks he plays with graphs, I thought I'd eliminate all the "inconvenient data" from the wind farm performance numbers today, giving a false impression that hardly any power is being generated.


Here's the actual numbers.

However, it is worth remembering that the highest performing wind farm in Australia can only generate 39% of its rated capacity. That is, if the turbines say they can put out 100MW, in reality, the best they can do is 39MW. The press releases trumpeting how great the farm is will all use the 100MW figure, making us think that wind generation is 2.5-3 times as good as it really is.

Just remember that next time you open your power bill and gasp. You're paying for it.

1 comment:

zeke said...

ha ha ha - nice mann-ipulation