Solar array Wind turbine Cloud
Day 1
00:00
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Capacity factor over time
Solar-only Wind-only Combined hybrid
Solar volatility · gaps
Wind volatility · gaps
Hybrid volatility · gaps

Volatility = average absolute change in output between samples (lower = smoother). Gaps = share of time below 5% of capacity (lower = fewer near-blackout periods). The hybrid plant beats whichever single source is currently better on both.

Wind + Solar Hybrid Output Smoothing

Solar power is predictable in shape — a daily arc rising and falling with the sun — but unpredictable in detail, since passing clouds can cut output sharply at any moment during the day and it is always zero at night. Wind power has no fixed daily shape at all: it can blow strongly at any hour, including through the night, but it is just as unpredictable minute-to-minute, and it can also fall to near nothing for long stretches. Crucially, the two resources tend to be loosely anti-correlated: many regions see more wind overnight and during unsettled, cloudy weather — exactly when solar is weak or absent. This simulator runs a simulated day or week with independently-varying, loosely anti-correlated wind and cloud conditions, and plots three live capacity-factor curves side by side — solar-only, wind-only, and a combined hybrid plant — so the smoothing effect of pairing complementary sources is visible directly in the traces and in the volatility and near-zero-output statistics beneath them.