What happens when the wind is not blowing?
Through the connection to the National Grid, there will not be power outages as when output from wind is low other generator capacity will compensate. Equally, when the wind speed is high, the output from the wind farm will allow other generators output to be lower. Wind turbines have been continuously developed in order to improve reliability. It is now possible to expect that offshore wind turbines will operate for over 90% of the time that they are designed to be operating. Wind turbines need to be turning to generate electricity, and wind turbines require the wind to be blowing for them to turn. Normally there is sufficient wind to turn the turbines, and the turbines will typically generate their maximum output at a wind speed of about 30mph. On average and at a typical offshore location, wind turbines will produce about 40% of the total energy that they could produce compared to if the turbines were operating continuously.
