High‐frequency standard deviation of the capacity factor of renewable energy facilities—Part 2: Wind

In terms of performances of wind energy installations, it is important to secure for every installation the highest possible average (mean) capacity factor, as well as the lowest possible standard deviation (SD) computed with high frequency. High‐frequency data of wind energy facilities are, however, very hard to be found and there are no estimations in the literature of the SD of the capacity factor of wind energy installations sampled with high frequency. Here, we show the data sampled every 5 minutes for the wind energy facilities connected to the Australian National Electricity Market (NEM) grid during the year 2018. While the average capacity factors are about 33% to 35%, the SDs have only marginally smaller values at about 30%, for coefficients of variation of about 90%. The analysis highlights the extreme variability of wind energy that has been dramatically downplayed so far, stressing the need for energy storage, that coupled to a more sophisticated control of production, storage, and consumption, is finally emerging as the key factor for making possible an efficient, resilient, renewable energy‐only grid. The collected and interpreted information and the provided analysis are filing a gap in the area of renewable energy and energy harvesting technology based on wind and solar photovoltaics where variability has been so far underevaluated.