Written by Amanda Froelich at trueactivist.com
On Thursday, high winds allowed Denmark to meet all of its electricity needs, with plenty to spare for neighboring countries.
On a particularly windy day (last Thursday), the country of Denmark was able to meet its domestic electricity demand and even export power to Norway, Germany, and Sweden thanks to its wind farms. As The Guardian reports, Denmark found itself producing 116% of its national electricity needs from wind turbines, and by 3 AM the next morning (Friday), when electricity demand dropped, the figure had risen to 140%.
80% of the power surplus was shared equally between Germany and Norway, which can store it in hydropower systems for later use. Lucky Sweden received the remaining fifth of excess power.
Said Oliver Joy, a spokesman for trade body the European Wind Energy Association:
“It shows that a world powered 100% by renewable energy is no fantasy. Wind energy and renewables can be a solution to decarbonization – and also security of supply at times of high demand.”
As you can see below, figures from the Danish transmission systems operator, emergent.dk, which provides a minute-by-minute account of renewable power in the nation grid, showed that Denmark’s wind farms weren’t even operating at their full 4.8GW capacity.
According to the chief commercial officer of the Ecofys energy consultancy, Kees van der Leun, a surge in wind farm installations could allow Denmark to produce half of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020 – that’s only five years away.
Not everyone is likely to be happy about this news, however. As The Guardian shares, the British wind industry is likely to view the Danish achievement with envy. This is no doubt because David Cameron’s government announced a withdrawal of support for onshore wind farms from next year, and planning obstacles for onshore wind builds.
“If we want to see this happening on a European scale, it is essential that we upgrade the continent’s aging grid infrastructure, ensure that countries open up borders, increase interconnection and trade electricity on a single market,” said Joy of the European Wind Energy Association.
Around three-quarters of Denmark’s wind capacity presently comes from onshore wind farms, which have strong government backing. One thing is for sure, the country is definitely putting the rest of the world to shame with these figures.
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but this was only for one especially windy day? they should put solar panels on all the windmills or something.. can’t be windy all the time
hahaha then you don’t know Denmark 😉 only 2-3 month with sunshine, rest of the year it’s raining and in Fall, it’s extra windy months, and if we can store our energy combined with wave energy then the amount of electricity will be enough for our own country and maybe even 30% to another country, if norway ad sweden did too, then it’s no problem, we share 😉 but then again, why not solar power too?
I live in this stupid country called Denmark.
The media as always spin it out to be much better than it is.
1. The wind mills is payed by politicians that made a big loan we the people pay for over the electricity bill….because it is a shit technology no private investors want to invest in it. So we the poor people as always have to pay for the politicians big dreams so they can become true.
2. When Denmark produce too much electricity from wind mills like the mentioned NIGHT day not the fucking day but NIGHT when everybody sleep and noone use electricity we hit 140%. Do you guys know where the last 40% go? Yeah we send it to naibour cointries, but what they dont tell you is we pay them freaking money to the our electricity. Yes, we have to pay them money ontop of giving them free electricity!
So a stormy night can be a costly thing just to the rid of the power we produce too much!
3. They kill rare birds/eagles in big numbers.
4. They make noise like HELL, it is impossible to live anywhere near suth a windmill!
5. They use so much fucking space on ground where you cant use the ground for anything, wasted earth.
6. Green energy? Wtf those windmills are produced with lots of chemicals,,,calling it green energy is a big lie.
Oh yeah and there is no wind 24/7 so you still need all the old coal stations on standby – fuck windmills they suck and are NOT cheaper.
i believe everybody is entitled to there own opinion that being said
1 wind mills are quite compared to gas turbines coal power stations, constant trucks conveyer belts trains or what other form of transport they bring the cole in on you good sir have a very flawed argument
2 killing of wild life would be very small compared to the constant acid rain from coal smog and other nasty bellowing out of a chimney
3 you don’t happen to be part of a group called waubra foundation
ps for you guys an girls that don’t know waubra foundation is a corrupt so called independent review here in aussie they basically make up their own facts and statistics
ps i am a welder i have worked on gas turbines coal power plants hydro and wind farms i can personally tell you which ones are the dirtiest some of the towns we go to the tin roofs of houses are all eroded just from the ash sediment
That is fantastic news for the people of Denmark !
Since the pinwheels are able to produce surplus energy, now they can remove all of the taxpayer funded support/subsidies.