Wind farms reached a high of 12.2% of the UK’s electricity demand on 28 December, and strong winds throughout the month enabled the UK’s wind fleet to meet an average of 5.3% of demand.
RenewableUK, the trade association for the wind, wave and tidal industry, has praised the National Grid’s handling of the large volumes of electricity generated by wind farms over the festive season.
Wind power supplied an average of 5.3% of the UK’s demand for electricity for December and early January, reaching a record share of 12.2% on 28 December. As a result, carbon emissions from the UK’s electricity generators were cut by over 750,000 tonnes, the equivalent of taking over 300,000 cars off the road.
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, 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."
The 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 generators involves taking a range of balancing actions, including reducing the rate at which fossil fuel generators consume fuel when wind output is higher. Last year, the National Grid launched a new wind power forecasting system, allowing its engineers to more accurately predict output from the UK’s growing fleet of wind farms.