Capacity factor does not preserve temporal-service ordering

Capacity factor (CF) is an annual-yield statistic. We test whether that scalar is decision-sufficient for zero-storage temporal-service ordering across 11,780 photovoltaic and 5,383 onshore-wind cells over 46 weather years. Among pairs within 0.5 percentage points of CF and under the same load, the higher-CF site provides lower direct service in 24.3% of PV and 33.1% of wind comparisons; at 0.25 points these fractions rise to 32.8% and 40.7%. For wind, CF rank correlation with the maximum load served directly in 99–99.5% of hours is 0.031–0.034. Selections differ in 40 of 82 PV and 7 of 45 wind markets; where they differ, the CF choice is worse in median 78.3% and 65.2% of weather years. CF correlates strongly with broad direct coincidence. Yet near-equal CF under the same zero-storage load does not preserve temporal-service ordering.