Wind power hit high of more than 12% of UK electricity demand

Dr Gordon Edge, RenewableUK’s Director of Policy, said “Wind energy represents a new paradigm in electricity generation, allowing us to harness the power of the weather when it’s available, cutting our fossil fuel bills and lowering our carbon emissions. As we’re generating increasingly large amounts of electricity from wind farm, feeding those large volumes of power into the system represents an engineering challenge to the National Grid – a challenge we are pleased to see they met over Christmas.

National Grid is responsible for balancing the output of the UK’s electricity generators with demand from consumers and businesses on a minute by minute basis. Integrating the variable output of wind turbines involves taking a range of balancing actions, including reducing the rate at which fossil fuel generators consume fuel when wind power output is higher. Last year, National Grid launched a new wind power forecasting system, allowing their engineers to more accurately predict output from the UK’s growing fleet of wind farms.

RenewableUK is the trade and professional body for the UK wind energy and marine energy renewables industries. Formed in 1978, and with more than 700 corporate members, RenewableUK is the leading renewable energy trade association in the UK. Wind turbines has been the world’s fastest growing renewable energy source for the last seven years, and this trend is expected to continue with falling costs of wind energy and the urgent international need to tackle CO2 emissions to prevent climate change.

Wind farm generation figures are derived from Elexon’s Balancing Mechanism Reports website www.bmreports.com/bsp/bsp_home.htm

www.renewableuk.com