Wind power hits peak to cover half of all electricity production

Wind power in Portugal had its most productive day ever last Friday churning out 85 Gigawatts per hour and accounting for 54 percent of the country’s electricity consumption that day, according to statistics released on Tuesday by national grid operator REN.

More specifically, at 2.45pm, the winds were blowing and the turbines turning to generate some 3,765 Megawatts (MW) and providing the national grid with 51 percent of the electricity being consumed at that time.
This contrasts with the previous Portuguese renewable wind high of 81 GW per hour and 3,702 MW achieved in November 2011.
On average terms, wind power produces some 20 percent of electricity energy consumption while favourable conditions can push that up to 30 percent while November’s wind drove that all the way up to 56 percent, a peak for the year.
This comes within the framework of a recession driven decrease in electricity consumption, which slid 2.9 percent over the first 11 months of this year while the year-on-year November figure showed a slowing in that rate of decrease, 0.9 percent.
Furthermore, a year-long drought hit the hydro-electric production capacity that despite the onset of a wet winter so far, still accounted for only 85 percent of its normal November output.
In overall terms, in the first 11 months of this year, the Portuguese national grid was fed by coal (25 percent), natural gas (21 percent) and wind (20 percent) generated electricity.The remainder was made up of hydro-electric (10 percent), biomass (5 percent) with solar power accounting for just one percent and with the remainder 16 percent of electricity consumption met by energy imports.