Stuart Young, whose report on intermittency of wind generation I discussed here a week or so ago, has written a response to the IPPR puff piece last week. He doesn't seem impressed:
The conclusions of the report note that:
- It is inaccurate to describe the output from wind power as ‘unpredictable’.
- In the short term, wind power output is remarkably stable and increases and decreases only very slowly.”
National Grid records generation by technology every five minutes and that is to be found on the NETA website at www.bmreports.com. National Grid also forecasts wind output for two days ahead and refines that forecast daily. This is recorded on the “Wind Forecast Out-turn” page on the NETA website...
This clearly shows the difference between the refined output and the recorded output to be as high as 1250MW, and the difference between the initial and refined forecasts to be almost 800MW over a 24 hour period. This is not a reflection on National Grid’s forecasting ability, it is an illustration of the impossibility of accurately and reliably forecasting the availability of electricity generated by wind.