Wind brings 24% of weekend power as UK gas, nuclear plants are off

Oct 20, 2014 - Wind farms accounted for 23.6% of Britain’s power over the weekend, compensating for several nuclear reactors that were offline and a drop in generation at the 1,360-MW Didcot B gas power plant due to a fire accident.

On Sunday wind power generation hit a record by reaching a 24% share of electricity supply for the whole day, trade association RenewableUK said today. It pointed out that wind’s share was larger than that of nuclear energy from Friday evening till Monday morning.

The previous record for wind farms was a 22% share of UK power in August.

On Saturday Britain also achieved a peak wind generation record as turbines were producing 7,998 MW for half an hour around noon, or enough to meet the electricity needs of 17 million households. The figure includes 6,372 MW from wind turbines "visible" to the National Grid (LON:NG) and 1,626 MW of embedded wind.

Over the weekend the Didcot B power was hit by fire and there were nine reactors out of service due to unplanned outages and refuelling. Statistics show that coal, gas and nuclear power plants were responsible for 26.4%, 26% and 14.3% of UK’s power on Saturday and Sunday.

“This year has seen successive new records for wind generation and this latest evidence shows it’s more than capable of stepping in when traditional sources of generation go offline without warning,” commented RenewableUK’s head of external affairs Jennifer Webber.

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