We have to talk about wind droughts

In 2020 The term "wind droughts" began to appear in the literature of the Energy Realists of Australia and in the notorious Integrated System Plan produced by the Australian Energy Market Operator.

We read more about wind droughts nowadays although if you ask a roomful of people about wind droughts you will mostly see quizzical expressions.

Wind droughts might have been investigated thoroughly in the 1990s when windmills started to be attached to the Australian grid and certainly before 2001 when the Howard government legislated a renewable energy target of 15% by 2020.

Think about it. Would you go farming without checking the rainfall before you start tilling and planting or indeed before you purchase the property?

The wind supply and especially the reliability of supply is to wind farming as rainfall is to growing pasture and crops. The Goyder Line was drawn on the map of South Australia to warn prospective farmers about the risk of droughts north of the line.

Similar lines drawn on the map of the world would have warned wind farmers away from Australia, North America, Europe, and possibly the rest of the world, and there would be no subsidised and mandated unreliable energy from windmills attached to the grid in those places.

That would have saved the trillions that have been spent around the world to build mountains of debt and obtain in return more expensive power and less secure supply with massive environmental damage, including the ruin of forests and farmland.

Not a great investment?

Germany took the lead and others including Britain, South Australia, Spain, and Denmark followed enthusiastically.

Now the evidence is in.

The windpower the experiment has failed disastrously, most obviously in Germany and Britain where deindustrialising proceeds apace under the impact of rising power prices.

Wind droughts are the root of the problem but they escaped serious attention until the Europeans metaphorically tripped over the Dunkelflaute in 2021.