A couple of weeks back 90,000 South Australian families found themselves powerless and boiling in a heat wave when its 1,576 MW of wind power capacity started the day producing more than 1,000 MW, but which later collapsed suddenly to a trifling 70 MW, sending the grid into meltdown.

Meanwhile in Germany, it was a threat of freezing to death that sharpened the focus of German generators, as wind power output plummeted there, too.

However, unlike South Australians, fortunately Germans were able to tap into adequate coal-fired base-load generation to keep their lights on and their homes warm, albeit at a staggering cost.

German coal, gas plant output at 5-year high in January
London (Platts)
Andreas Franke & Alisdair Bowles
3 February 2017

* January average coal output at 17.3 GW, highest since Feb 2012

* Coal, gas ramped up to offset nuclear outages, low wind, demand gains

*…