The always interesting analysis from WattClarity, an independent company studying Australia's National Energy Market (NEM), has raised the issue of a "wind drought" and what it potentially means for the power grid.

WattClarity's Paul McArdle has plotted the generation of wind across the NEM over the past 5 years and found 2024 could be shaping up as the worst in terms of aggregate yield.

Mr McArdle notes given the growth in capacity from the earlier two years, it should be clear the performance is much poorer in 2024 Q2 compared to those earlier years.

In other words, there is 2,500MW more capacity in wind generation in 2024 than in the second quarter of 2021, yet the yield is roughly the same.

"Even in absolute terms, it will be miles below the aggregate yield in 2023 Q2 and 2022 Q2 (i.e. that same quarter of the 2022 Energy Crisis!)," Mr McArdle wrote.

"In aggregate terms, eyeballing the chart it should be relatively easy to see that 2024 might be as much as 3,000,000MWh 'short' of wind production through 2024 Q2 compared to what some might have expected," Mr McArdle said.

"All in all, it is (at the same time) both a frightening picture … but also completely expected (at least by some of us)."

• The top, dark green line in the graphic represents the installed wind capacity on June 30, 2023
• The second light green line  n the graphic represents the installed wind capacity on June 30, 2023
• The dotted red line plots the trajectory if the doldrums continue through to end of June.
• The bottom two lines represent wind capacity on June 30 in 2021 and 2022 respectively

There of course may be other issues at play than just lack of wind, such as plant availability, network constraints and simply there's too much power elsewhere and the wind unit doesn't like the look of a very low, or even negative price, and shuts down.

But before any superficial conclusions are made, Mr McArdle notes it's it seven years since the last "wind drought".

"We need decades of weather history, not just a year or two, for robust modelling (and credible conclusions)," he wrote.

Also, on Sunday AEMO forecasts suggested there would be a moderate burst of wind through to Tuesday, which Mr McArdle noted will mean "What eventuates may not be quite so dramatic as what's drawn in the dotted red line."