Ontario Wind Turbine Production

The past week's heat and humidity was not accompanied by much output from Ontario's wind turbines.

This is a quick post to demonstrate that last week's wind output was a typical level of production for an Ontario July.

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The capacity factor is determined by calculating the period's actual generation divided by the total generation that would be produced in the units produced at 100% of capacity throughout the period.

Data stuff

Ontario's system operator posts hourly records of the wind turbine facilities on it's grid (which is not a comprehensive list of wind production in Ontario) - the file can be downloaded from this page.  The figures behind the graphs produced for this post are similar; there is some variance after September 2010 as the figures I collect are from the Generator Output and Capability reporting, and I have discarded any data for generators prior to their entering commercial operation (most of those dates are taken from the Ontario Power Authority site).

Monthly reporting gives a poor view of the utility of generation from industrial wind - there are periods on very little production in high production months too.

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The 12-month averaging shows the average is about 30% of the nameplate capacity is the average generation.
Depending on you perspective, the swoon in 2010 might be suspeced as older turbines seeing a decline in performance...

... and the recovery of the capacity factor to the 30% level might be attributed to more productionturbines being installed.

I suspect there's some truth to both assertions: the turbines do suffer a drop in performance as the age, and new turbines are probably more productive.

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Here's the spreadsheet view (the graphs are the final 3 tab)