Denmark blows past old wind record

Renewables International

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2015 was another record year for wind power in Denmark, where turbines generated 42 percent of demand, topping the old record of 39 percent from the previous year. No other country has such a large share of wind power.

On Friday, Energinet reported the new record (press release). The grid agency is careful, however, to point out that the record is not possible without the country’s power trading options: “we can import or export electricity corresponding to up to approximately 80 percent of our maximum electricity consumption.” Last year, the country generated surplus wind power of six of the time – more than it could consume.

In contrast, Germany has yet to generate any renewable electricity in excess of demand, with the record being around 80 percent (for all renewable power, not just wind). Over at EnergyTransition.de, I recently wrote about Denmark’s somewhat unique power trading situation (along with Switzerland’s).

Thanks apparently to these power trading options, Energinet says “the number of hours with negative prices is unlikely to change significantly” in the future; last year, wholesale power prices dropped into the negative less than one percent of the time. However, there seems to be a debate over this issue in Denmark, with the head of utility lobby group Danish Energy saying that “if we keep putting up wind turbines… it would be an unstable system.”

The situation with negative prices is also a bit different in Germany, where the number of hours with negative prices is not much greater, but could rise significantly because Germany can only export and import around a quarter of its electricity at a time – not 80 percent like in Denmark.

September 2 was also unique; that entire day, no central station power plant was needed at all. The new record peak for wind power generation relative to demand also increased from 132 percent to 139 percent.

Our Bernard Chabot also recently produced an overview of the wind power sector in Denmark.

Source: Renewables International. Reproduced with permission.