Business Mirror
Business Mirror
04 Jan 2014
Written by Bloomberg News
04 Jan 2014
U.K. wind farms generated a record amount of electricity in December as well as hitting weekly and daily highs after installed capacity rose 45 percent in a year, a lobby group said.
Wind turbines generated a total of 2,841,080 megawatt-hours (MWh) over the 31-day period, enough to power more than 5.7 million UK homes, RenewableUK said on Thursday in an e-mailed statement.
Daily generation rose to as high as 17 percent of the national total on December 21, the group said.
Britain is relying on wind power, particularly offshore turbines, to boost its share of energy from renewables to a European Union-mandated 15 percent by 2020 from 4.1 percent in 2012, the most recent year for which data are available.
Installed capacity rose to 9,710 mw at the end of June from 6,856 mw a year earlier, according to RenewableUK.
“This gives us a great sense of confidence for the year ahead, when we will continue to increase the amount of clean power we generate from wind, onshore and offshore,” Maf Smith, deputy chief executive officer of the group, said in the statement. “It provides cast-iron proof that the direction of travel away from dirty fossil fuels to clean renewable sources is unstoppable.”
The EU target covers energy for electricity, heating and transportation, and the UK aims to get about 30 percent of its power from renewables to help achieve the goal.
Wind turbines generated 132,812 MWh on December 21. For the week beginning December 16, they provided a record 783,886 MWh of electricity, or 13 percent of the country’s needs that week. source
Bloomberg News
In Photo: The London Array is an offshore wind farm in the Thames Estuary in the United Kingdom. With an installed capacity of 630 megawatts, it is the world’s largest offshore wind farm. (Wikimedia Commons)
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