By Paul Homewood
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
https://www.scottishpowerrenewables.com/pages/east_anglia_one.aspx
I have analysed the output from the East Anglia 1 offshore wind farm, using daily data from the CfD database for winter 2022/23. The wind farm, which was fully running in 2020 has capacity of 714MW. During this 3-month period, it averaged 391MW, a load factor of 54.7%.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
However, as the graph shows, it actually ranged from a low of 3MW to 668MW. There were 13 days when it ran at less than 10% of capacity.
Between Feb 6th and 15th, wind power was consistently below average, running at 124MW, and during a period of 4 days in January the average was just 60MW.
This is of course only one site, and wind conditions may have been different elsewhere, such as around Scotland. Nevertheless this part of the North Sea is where most of the new capacity planned is going to be located. Wind conditions will probably similar there to the North Sea coasts of Denmark and Germany, so wind droughts may affect their wind farms too.
It would therefore be dangerous to rely on getting more than 10% of offshore wind capacity all of the time in winter.
