Global Wind Power Capacity Tops Nuclear Energy For First Time (japantimes.co.jp)

mdsolar writes: The capacity of wind power generation worldwide reached 432.42 gigawatts (GW) at the end of 2015, up 17 percent from a year earlier and surpassing nuclear energy for the first time, according to data released by global industry bodies.

The generation capacity of wind farms newly built in 2015 was a record 63.01 GW, corresponding to about 60 nuclear reactors, according to the Global Wind Energy Council based in Brussels. The global nuclear power generation capacity was 382.55 GW as of Jan. 1, 2016, the London-based World Nuclear Association said.

Comments

Nuclear 80%-90% & reliable. Wind 20%-30% &

[raymorris]

It doesn't make a lot of sense to compare wind vs nuclear because they are used for different purposes, in a 3-way mix, but ...

> How does average nuclear production compare to its maximum capacity?

Nuclear ranges between 80%-90%, wind is 20-30%.

The benefit of wind is that it allows you to turn down your natural gas plants whenever the wind happens to be favorable.

Nuclear can't be quickly and easily throttled up and down. That's it's one actual weakness - it's reliable, etc. (There was a purely political weakness , but environmentalists are now undoing the damage they did back in 1960s, admitting it was a mistake).

So what you do, if you want clean, reliable power (rather than purely political points) is you have nuclear and hydro for the minimum load, because they are steady. You have wind and MAYBE solar to get what you can, whenever nature wants to allow it, and natural gas to make the difference. You throttle the natural gas plants up and down to meet the difference between current demand and current supply from wind + nuclear/ hydro.

Hydro is nice, in very specific locations, most of which are already in use. So it's an important source of power, but can't be increased much.