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Windy Day In Denmark Provides 140% of Energy Needs

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A power-generating windmill turbine operates in a wind farm on Backbone Mountain near Thomas, West VirginiaIt was an unusually windy day in Denmark on Thursday, July 9. So unusually windy that the country found themselves generating 116% of the entire nation’s energy needs.

On Friday morning at 3am, Denmark wind power had provided 140% of the electricity demand, and was able to share the excess power with Norway, Germany and Sweden.

Germany and Norway received 40% of the excess energy each, and used hydropower systems to save it for another day. Sweden used the last fifth of extra electricity.

The numbers were publicly and quickly available because Denmark’s transmission systems operator has a website that tracks how much renewable energy is part of the national grid on a minute-to-minute basis. According to the website, Denmark’s wind power generation could be even higher, as their farms never reached their full 4.86GW capacity on Thursday.

Denmark has invested considerably in wind power, and the nation could source half of its energy from renewables even before 2020, which is the goal. The chief commercial officer of the Ecofys energy consultancy, Kees van der Leun, explains that every year, wind energy grows by 18%, so there is constant movement in the right direction. 0.5GW of capacity will be added in onshore windfarms by the end of this decade, and 1.5GW in new offshore windfarms are also planned and increase the current capacity by more than 100%.

A spokesman for the European Wind Energy Association, Oliver Joy, expressed his enthusiasm for the news, saying that it proves that a world without fossil fuels is entirely possible. He hopes wind and power can cover electricity needs, replace oil and gas, and be safe and reliable, as well.

 

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2 COMMENTS

  1. What’s not so nice is that they exported the surplus 1500 MWh at 0.0035 cents/kWh when some of the new wind farms got paid 15 cents/kWh. There’s got to be a more sensible way to value this precious resource.

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