> sending 30MW of power to the grid every minute of every day
One of those little inconsistencies that stood out to me...
Scratches head MW = 1000J / s
What happens when you send 30MW per minute..
30MW per minute = 1000J / s / m
Hmmm
One of those little inconsistencies that stood out to me...
Scratches head MW = 1000J / s
What happens when you send 30MW per minute..
30MW per minute = 1000J / s / m
Hmmm
They didn't write it in the sense of "30MW per minute", it was "30MW every minute" meaning a constant power rating of 30MW, instead of a variable rating where one minute it's 30MW and the next minute it's at 20MW, or whatever.
"A capacity factor of 100 percent means the wind farm would be sending 30MW of power to the grid every minute of every day since it's been in operation."
The "sending" portion makes me interpret this in the sense of 30MW per minute.
"Every minute of every day" is just a common English expression to mean "all the time." The word "minute" in there isn't significant and doesn't factor in the calculation, it's just for emphasis.
So really all the author means is "producing 30MW consistently for the whole time it's been in operation." Or if they did use minutes as a time slice in the capacity calculation, it would have to be "averaging 30MW during every minute of every day".
As I understood the term the capacity factor is the percentage of time the plant is generating power. All plants have periods of maintenance and other "down times" which means they don't achieve 100% capacity. I would expect to use that number like this:
Given a 30MW plant with a 50% capacity factor measured for the year, I would consider it to provide 30MW x 180 x 24 or 129,600 MWh of generating capacity. Two plants with a 50% capacity factor would give you coverage at their rated power all year only if they never overlapped in their down time. So if I was working the issue operationally I'd put in three plants to insure I had 100% coverage of 30MW all year long.
[0] https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/renewable-sources-o...
Saying that this is ambiguous is paramount to making the assumption that the author does not know the difference, and then trying to twist the meanings to prove your point. That's unnecessarily tendentious.