Wind farms meet 40% of Irish power demand on Oct 20-21

Oct 23, 2014 - The share of wind power in Ireland’s electricity demand reached 50% over the weekend and 40% on Monday and Tuesday, with the help of hurricane Gonzalo, EirGrid statistics show.

The Irish Wind Energy Association (IWEA) applauded the output in a statement on Wednesday and also pointed to a new peak wind farm output record of 1,784 MW at 1845 local time on October 17. That volume is estimated to be enough to cover the needs of more than 1.15 million Irish households.

The 50% wind share was achieved between 1800 local time on October 17 and midnight on October 19. Then, wind power met 40% of Irish demand between midnight on October 19 and midnight on October 21, IWEA said.

The strong winds over the weekend, which continued this week, also helped wind farms in the UK reach a 23.6% share of demand. Thus they compensated for several nuclear reactors being offline and a drop in generation at the 1,360-MW Didcot B gas power plant, which suffered a fire accident. Britain too hit a new peak wind generation record of 7,998 MW for half an hour around noon on October 18, or enough to meet the electricity needs of 17 million households.

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