It’s official! Wind energy provided over 16 GW of power to the national grid for the first time ever on Sunday 8th December, a big milestone for the renewable form of energy production.
Wind powers to new record
It was certainly blowy on Sunday thanks to a storm sweeping in and was particularly windy between 5 pm and 5.30 pm when nationalgridESO recorded wind generation of 16162 MW. That figure is the highest ever recorded and beats previous records broken throughout the year.
At the time of the record-breaking feat, wind power accounted for 38.5% of all energy provided to the national grid, beating the 18.7% for Gas, 16.3% for Nuclear and 16.3% for imports. Coal, Biomass, Hydro, Storage and other accounted for the period’s energy production. As expected for a cold dark evening, Solar accounted for 0%.
Confirmation of the new record was posted on nationalgridESO's Twitter page
As well as breaking the record at 5 pm, wind power also provided 43.7% of all energy throughout the day.
RenewableUK director of strategic communications Luke Clark said: “This new British clean energy record is a great early Christmas present, and shows just how important wind is in an energy system that’s changing rapidly.
“On a dark cold Sunday when we need it most, wind was providing more than 40% of our power, far more than any other source of electricity.
“Wind energy is at the heart of our modern power system, enabling us to take practical action against dangerous climate change.”
The news is promising and suggests that wind energy production is on the rise and stepping up to the mark, something that will be key if the government is to hit its carbon targets.