Wind: talk’n ’bout junk generation

I saw that Alberta was setting demand records the past couple of days, so I visited the Alberta Electricity System Operator (AESO) website to see how wind generation contributed to meeting peak demand.

Not surprisingly, it didn’t

AESO Daily Market Report, July 15, 2014 from ets.aeso.ca

I say not surprisingly because I’ve written on this before, in July 2012.

Alberta has some comparatively strong wind resources, and seeing that it gets most electricity from coal, I can’t feel too strongly about the increase in wind turbines there.

However, the lull during this latest record does again demonstrate that industrial wind turbine output has little capacity value, can’t displace firm generation, and is a low quality, low value, electricity generation source.