By Jo Nova

There is no saving the Australian wind industry from a high pressure cell Right now 19 out of 20 wind turbines are essentially towers of fiberglass waste

Australia has built 11.5 GW of theoretical total wind power capacity on the National Energy Market (NEM) spread across 80 locations on the Eastern Seaboard, and at one point today only 4.1% of it was working. Another gigawatt of generation on the Western side is only generating at 3 – 5% capacity.

The green bar below represents total wind generation today compared to the total power consumed (the black line).

Total wind generation for the NEM in Australia.

The Australian government is telling us “we’re different” to other countries struggling to make wind and solar work. We supposedly have “world-class resources” and “natural advantages in renewables“. But we also have world-class high pressure cells that stop wind generation across the entire nation simultaneously. On days like these, it doesn’t matter much whether we have 1,000 wind turbines or 10,000 if 95% of them are failing.

Compared to Europe, we have a natural disadvantage in wind power — there’s no one to rescue us when we screw up. We’re […]