The wind energy industry claims to provide power for thousands of homes with each new windmill development, but in fact, wind turbines can only generate kilowatt hours of electricty when the winds are blowing at the right speeds. Wind is an intermittent resource, and as such, is unreliable as a power source.
The small amount of power they do generate typically does not match the time of need profile. To put this in context, the thousands of turbines in the San Gorgonio Pass represented approximately 558 megawatts of installed capacity in 2008.
The document linked to this page lists the monthly production figures for the San Gorgonio Pass wind energy facility during the period from 1998 to 2006. The monthly production figures are broken down by Time of Use (TOU). In California, time-of-use rates are usually divided into three or four time blocks per twenty-four hour period (on-peak, mid-peak, off-peak and sometimes super off-peak) and by seasons of the year (summer and winter).
TOU = 1 On peak (only occurs during summer months Jun to Sep)
TOU = 2 Mid peak
TOU = 3 Off peak
TOU = 4 Super Off peak (only occurs during winter months Oct to May)
Below is a summary of the 1999 to 2006 average yearly turbine power production in the San Gorgonio Pass located within the Southern California Edison service area.
Year | kWh Production |
1998 | 797709528 |
1999 | 883429028 |
2000 | 952507247 |
2001 | 858533582 |
2002 | 965777430 |
2003 | 793296843 |
2004 | 779315629 |
2005 | 786556823 |
2006 | 732561714 |
Windaction.org wishes to thank Alexandra Weit for her efforts in obtaining this information from Southern California Edison.