Energy news in general

Scot_39

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82172230#Comment_82172230

Thry comment on daily and five daily accuracies to within 5 knots (5.75mph) in a recent winter performance review - but not hourly.

Not tgat it mattees for most wind farms but their directiin less accurate.

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/blog/2026/how-accurate-was-the-met-office-during-winters-weather

Wind speed is assessed as accurate if it’s within five knots of the verifying observation and comes into sharp focus during the stormy winter season.

89% of wind speed forecasts at the 1-day range were within the bounds of ‘accurate’, with this only dropping to 76% at the 5-day range.

Given uk has occassional issues around 24 hr spin up generstion costs - maybe 10% in error isnt really that brilliant.

I wonder if theirs a summer equivalent for lower aver wind sppeds and given uk now c20GW solar panels - grid and domestic - solar intensity.

JKenH

Bearing in mind median wind speed is between 4 and 5.5 knots, the fact that Met Office regard a wind speed error of +/- 5 knots as accurate tells us all we need to know how about their forecasting.

Scot_39

"Comes into sharp focus " maybe key - I assumed they were maybe talking about ability to predict significantly higher winds in winter being within that margin.

And again no ave or gust specified - which is where I notice large differences with others like BBC in past.

A quick google says average more like 8-10 knots.

Turbines I was used to in distant past - tended to only kick in at around 10 knots with any meaningful output and hit peak efficiency - in mid 20s. Smaller than current mega offshore beasts though. In fact some would barely turn at 5 knots - or generate any meaningful power if did.

And they are unlikely to want to point out its actually a pretty rubbish prediction in their own reporting.

On that median 89% within +/-100% doesnt sound so good.

On their historic average of 9.4 - 89% within +/-50% doesnt sound so good either.

QrizB

Turbines I was used to in distant past - tended to only kick in at around 10 knots with any meaningful output and hit peak efficiency - in mid 20s.

There's a power curve for the Enercon E92 wind turbine (the 2.35 MW model that's installed at Kirk Hill in Scotland) here:

https://en.wind-turbine-models.com/turbines/131-enercon-e-92

That cuts in at 2m/s, makes 10% of output at 5m/s and reaches full output at 14m/s.

In knots that's 3.9, 9.7 and 27.2 respectively. Or 4, 10 and 28 if we make the common simplification that 1m/s = 2kn.