So much power was produced by Denmark’s windfarms on Thursday that the country was able to meet its domestic electricity demand and export power to Norway, Germany and Sweden.
On an unusually windy day, Denmark found itself producing 116% of its national electricity needs from wind turbines yesterday evening. By 3am on Friday, when electricity demand dropped, that figure had risen to 140%.
Interconnectors allowed 80% of the power surplus to be shared equally between Germany and Norway, which can store it in hydropower systems for use later. Sweden took the remaining fifth of excess power.
“It shows that a world powered 100% by renewable energy is no fantasy,” said Oliver Joy, a spokesman for trade body the European Wind Energy Association. “Wind energy and renewables can be a solution to decarbonisation – and also security of supply at times of high demand.”
The figures emerged on the website of the Danish transmission systems operator, energinet.dk, which provides a minute-by-minute account of renewable power in the national grid. The site shows that Denmark’s windfarms were not even operating at their full 4.8GW capacity at the time of yesterday’s peaks.
A surge in windfarm installations means Denmark could be producing half of its electricity from renewable sources well before a target date of 2020, according to Kees van der Leun, the chief commercial officer of the Ecofys energy consultancy.
“They have a strong new builds programme with a net gain of 0.5GW in new onshore windfarms due before the end of the decade,” he said. “Some 1.5GW from new offshore windfarms will also be built, more than doubling the present capacity. We’re seeing a year-on-year 18% growth in wind electricity, so there really is a lot of momentum.”
The British wind industry may view the Danish achievement with envy, after David Cameron’s government announced a withdrawal of support for onshore windfarms from next year, and planning obstacles for onshore wind builds.
Joy said: “If we want to see this happening on a European scale, it is essential that we upgrade the continent’s ageing grid infrastructure, ensure that countries open up borders, increase interconnection and trade electricity on a single market.”
Around three-quarters of Denmark’s wind capacity comes from onshore windfarms, which have strong government backing.
View all comments >
comments (560)
Sign in or create your Guardian account to join the discussion.
Do they have any conventionally fueled power plants in operation? Who owns the power generation and distribution systems in Denmark, public or private? Hope cost savings are being passed on down to the consumers.
Is that ironic? Denmark has the world's most expensive electricity.
That is because Denmark has chosen to tax energy in preference to other things. 58.6% of the price of electricity to households is made up of VAT, taxes and levies.
And some of the world's best pay packets. Dollars per unit is pretty meaningless unless you can also compare it to the rest of their earning & spending.
You'd expect a small northern country with little in the way of coal or oil or natural gas to have expensive electricity.
“It shows that a world powered 100% by renewable energy is no fantasy”
This has been true for decades. As examples such as Denmark are growing, there is less and less room for climate change deniers to argue in favor of fossil fuels.
But wait - there is going to that idiotic comment asking that wind power is bad because what to do if wind stops... or transmission losses... or noise pollution... or that Jesus likes coal. Just wait - it's coming.
"Jesus likes coal" - priceless.
Just because it was windy yesterday doesn't mean there will be enough wind to generate Denmark's power throughout the year.
Focussing on daily maximums to prove a point is illogical. It is the average output of renewables over the year that is important. The conclusion that should be drawn from this is that more focus is needed on developing large scale storage.
It's really about money. Renewable energy has at a guess always been possible. Windmills have been around for a very long time. You can't ignore the monetary cost of renewables and you can't expect the world's poor to stump up the cash.
Yes, but isn't the point that this happened just on one day when it was very windy? A country can't bank on it always being windy.
There is a place for renewable energy, but something reliant on the weather can't be relied upon entirely.
Denmark aims to install enough wind power that on average/over lower output days its needs are met... plus it can plan on importing from Germany/Norway.
Even on supposedly calm days power is still generated.
Wind is one of the solutions we need to ensure coal, oil and gas are left in the ground.
http://winderful.diascreative.net/
(1) It was windy for a summer month. This means that winter production can be of the same order of magnitude or the same ballpark figure as consumption in the very near future, if not already.
(2) The excess was transported to places quite far away, over national borders. The point there is that in future, places with huge wind-energy potential and smaller populations (like Norway, say) using HVAC transmission or whatever, can export excess power to more densely populated & industrialised areas like Germany, when it isn't windy/sunny enough there.
Note!
Power used to pump for hydro storage.
UK policy?
Population?
Population density?
Topography?
Weather?
note - hydro storage in Denmark? they need to build some hills ... now Norway could just dam a fjord or two...
The UK doesn't actually have a lot more hydro-storage potetial than it already uses. Scotland is about full up. Don't know about Wales. England just doesn't have the space.
At the moment, energy storage technologies for small and medium-scale consumption is going through an equivalent to what happened with aviation/space exploration in the 1950s/60s. Huge leaps in materials science, and concomitant new physics being explored week by week.
One thing about wind energy is that it can happen at very different scales and very widely distributed: the potential for rural and island communities (of a few doen to a few thousand people) to use new storage technologies and be largely self-sufficient is tremendous. Or it was, until the Tories decided that's enough of that.
There's a new pumped storage facility planned for some quarries in Llanberis, but it's not that big.
Every little helps though, and it seems a reasonable use of quarries - and England must have a few of those somewhere.
"The Conservative UK government has announced a withdrawal of support for onshore windfarms. Denmark’s windfarms have strong government backing."
Why the political spin? Britain cannot afford to lose massive land area to onshore windfarming. Denmark has the correct geo-criteria to have large off-shore windfarms, which is the main reason that they can be successful with this strategy (and good on them for managing it).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_Denmark
Actually, Scotland has quite a lot of land that could be used. You're right about offshore (though they obviously cost more to set up and maintain) but, ufortunately, we have seen that the one percent are just as opposed to anyone "spoiling the view" whether a turbine has its feet on land or on water.
Did you read this bit...
"Around three-quarters of Denmark’s wind capacity comes from onshore windfarms, which have strong government backing"
'Britain cannot afford to lose massive land area to onshore windfarming. '
Errrr, the pylons supporting the turbines sit on a relatively small pad a few metres across. You can stick wind turbines in a field and graze animals or grow crops around them.
Finally a purpose for Donald Trump. The 'Idiot Wind' from his gob could provide power for the whole of the USA.
The figures on this look great and I've never been down with the 'eyesore' argument either. Sorry but wind farms look aesthetically pleasing to me.
Doesn't trump mean the wind from another orifice?
Denmark is a world leader in wind turbine manufacturing. If they don't managed who would?
Also, rather conveniently, the cost of each wind kWh is not mentioned.
I'm not quite sure what your fallacy of an argument is called, as I am not a philosophy scholar, but it is a beauty nonetheless. You argue that the fact that the Danes produced so much power from wind is no big deal as they are experts at producing windmills. So you are waiting for the headline about record wind generation by a country that is shit at wind power or, better still, by a country that doesn't have any turbines at all?
Wind on land is currently only slightly more expensive than fossil fuels per MW to build but has much less return as the wind doesn't always blow.
However if you factor in the fact that the fossil fuel is massively subsidized by governments then it becomes absolutely comparitive.
I couldn't care less who produces how much power from wind. My point is, in Denmark there are 10s of thousands of jobs associated with power from wind. So to say there is a vested interest in succeeding is not exaggerated. Hence failure is not an option, hence heavily subsidised by consumers through "green" levies on energy and tax breaks for producers. Is it green energy? Sure, but there will be a lot of glass fibre wings to be disposed of once they reach end of life, which is already starting to become a problem.
I love wind turbines and every time I see one I think that's a small bit of a nuclear plant not needed.
So on a usual non windy day, what then?
Other energy sources would kick in to make up the shortfall. No one is suggesting dependency on one technology.
On a usual non-windy day where you are, it is always windy somewhere else.
Somewhere not to far away, in these days of HVAC transmission lines - such as the ones already linking Ireland, the UK, Netherlands etc.
Thats a very flawed viewpoint - not only would all countries need to waste money installing excess capacity to prop up their neighbours but you would need massive & expenisve connection capacity to shift such massive loads. It not 'always' windy somewhere else... Europe largely shares similar weather patterns.
In June, Scotland's wind turbines produced a third of Scotland's entire electricity needs for the month, or enough for 70% of Scotland's households. Not bad for summertime.
IIf Thatcher had not sabotaged the nascent industry three decades ago, the UK would be leading the world in a mature wind-turbine & tidal-power engineering industry by now. And of course, offshore wind -- and tide/wave -- production would be massively higher.
Sad to see another Tory government eager to pull the rug out .
When wind production is high in one country it is also high in others. Wind does not just stop in Denmark or Scotland. The trade prices for electricity go down as excess electricity is produced. You are hoping no other country produces electricity at that time to get a high price to export.
And to generate this energy they would have needed engineering experience and expertise that could have been provided by a strong, relevant engineering industry in Scotland. That, I think, is the point being made.
In practice other countries take up the surplus which is sold at very low cost... because it gets priority over fossil fuel power, which is then switched off.
Which is why conventional baseload plant can't make a profit any more, why EON has dumped it.
And why we need a different model for the electricity market - e.g. govt pays for standby plant to cover when renewables not online.
An important thing to note that is hidden by % figures is that current (14:15) demand is only 3.5GW on the transmission system - at 3am this was likely much smaller. Not so much of an achiemvent at those levels, Denmark indeed should spill over the 100% figure quite often with 4.8Gw installed... hell it should do so daily during even moderate wind conditions.
UK demand by comparison peaked today at 33.7GW (55-60 in winter)... I assume the Danish grid is heavily embedded so does a lot less transmission than the UK one even cosidering the massive poulation and size differences.
I believe that Denmark burns a lot of straw along with its wind turbines. Other than that, the rest is fossil. Its electricity generation is actually more carbon intensive than many of its nuclear and hydro powered neighbours.
UK demand last winter only twice went to 50GW or beyond (53GW).
UK demand has been falling and it was (another) mild winter.
We have had several mild winters suppressing demand although your correct efficiencies and heavy industrial moving east has been steadily decreasing demand - the future will likely have strong growth with expectations of 12GW of additional electric vehicle demand and 40GW of electric heating demand!
Once again, we have a headline about renewables that is visually impressive, but technically meaningless (or at least woefully lacking in context). So wind power generates 140% of demand in Denmark for a specific length of time on a specific date. That's not important. What is important is how much demand is met on average over the year, and how much that costs compared to other clean energy sources, including the money received from selling any excess.
Denmark got 39.1 percent of its overall electricity from wind in 2014.
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/01/07/3608898/denmark-sets-world-record-for-wind-power/
I assume you mean a narrow definition of costs (eg as in £ per MWh). What about looking at the broader cost picture of pollution, ill health and climate change from carbon-based power generation ? Changes the equation a bit. That's why so many people derive hope and encouragement from seeing improvements and gains made in generation from renewables.
Yes, still a long, long way to go, but at least it's the right direction.
I believe the point is that it shows that renewable energy can generate enough electricity to largely replace conventional systems.
With energy storage, smart grids and better interconnectivity, the excess can be stored/transported for when the wind doesn't blow/sun shine etc.
Problem is, currently that interconnectivity and storage capacity is not available.
stock exchange for renewables?
It does exist already.
Ug. Stock exchanges are good for making people rich off bubbles and poor off busts. If you want to invest in renewables buy solar panels or choose an electricity provider that uses renewable energy.
“It shows that a world powered 100% by renewable energy is no fantasy,”
This statement is illogical. The example instead shows that a world where renewables provide 100% of electricity is possible on some days of the year.
It would be more instructive to look at the average amount of energy renewables provide over the year, and not focus on daily maximums, before making claims like this.
The reality is that until we develop afforable storage (i.e. the cost of which is still affordable when it added to the £/MWh of the power generated), we will either need back up or learn to live with intermittent power.
Final point: generating 140% of your electricity needs is OK when you have interconnection like Denmark. It would create issues here in the UK, or most other countries.
Why is interconnection a problem an issue in the UK? We already import a great deal of electricity from France so the interconnection already exists.
Always windy somewhere champ.
And when its not windy, its often sunny.
Certainly a step in the right direction, isn't it?
The French Interconnection carries a maximum of 2GW, the Dutch one 1GW.
Both seem to be maxed out most of the time.
The miserabilist tendency are out in force today- some of whom would no doubt love to live in a converted water or windmill in the Tory shires.
Brilliant.
Come on UK, you're doing pretty good with offshore wind, but can do much better
was Farage visiting.?
Yes, but with a priapism in his right arm no pictures were taken....
Despite recent events at the polls, Denmark remains, by and large, a progressive country while the UK becomes more regressive...
By comparison, here in Australia we have a prime minister who has declared wind turbines ugly, but loves open-cut coal mines.
With a blizzard in the Southern Highlands the ones near Lake George that his loyal treasurer found so utterly offensive are spinning like tops.
I was in northern Germany recently.
They have turbines all over flat farming land.
Why do we mostly only put them on hills where the scenery is best?
We put them where there is the best wind resource.
As I understand it all of North Germany is flat... so no hills to put them on anyway...
They are horrible things when the whole horizon is cluttered with them.
OK, a compromise then. We get rid of all MacDonalds and their ilk on the edge of out of town shopping malls, along motors and so on. For each one we put in a couple of wind turbines. They will not be any worse on the eye and we can have a man with a van flogging cheap burgers beside it. We can only win all round and nothing is made any uglier that it already was.
Seriously how many more people intended to comment that wind isn't the answer because it's not reliable? No one said it was the only answer even the article says "100% renewable energy", not 100% wind energy, 100% renewable.
What this means is if we have enough renewable methods, solar, thermal, hydro, Wind and whatever else we may think of or have already thought of then as a combination effect we should never be without the power we need even if suddenly we have a day with a lack of wind.
The upgrading of the sharing infrastructure throughout the EU would make it able to grasp a renewable energy target by 2050. However that infrastructure is ridiculously expensive, and thus we turn to the politicians of the EU Member States. And impetus to upgrade such an infrastructure? hell no.
Kudos to the forward-thinking Danish. Time to upgrade grids around the world and embrace the future of cleaner, renewable power of all stripes. We're all capable of taking steps to leave the fossil and (petro-) plastic world behind.
In the UK we need to have about 60GW of electric power available. Questions for the wind enthusiasts. 1. How much of that power can be supplied by wind? 2. How many GW of wind should we install? (A wind generator produces about one third of its nameplate capacity on average. Sometimes it produces its nameplate capacity, sometimes it produces nothing.) 3. When you write your plan of where our power comes from, when the wind doesn't blow where do we get our power from? Sometimes the wind output will go to virtually zero and I'd like the lights to stay on when it does. Do you plan to install as much by way of interconnector capacity as your planned wind capacity or do you have some other plan? To balance variable wind we are going to need a lot of capacity that will only be used intermittently and hence generate expensive electricity.
We need to reduce our carbon emissions but we need some other plan than wind to do it.
"Interconnectors allowed 80% of the power surplus to be shared equally between Germany and Norway, which can store it in hydropower systems for use later".
British people hate wind, must be all those egg and beans, and they hate solar, but the fact remains, it is always windy or sunny or both within the British isles at any given time, which equates to the UK having the ability to be self sufficient, but there is not one once of encouragement coming from the veggy hoo haa's in green spots of interest to allow wind farms or solar farms. The UK is going to be very detached from Europe in the future and poorer for it, as renewable s are the way to go. If i can cook egg and beans on a solar cooker 50% of the year in the UK, then i can make enough wind to keep at least one windmill in business, times that by the population take away the wasters who have their heads in the sand and the others who wouldn't know what a blade of grass is and i think the UK just might become so smelly, immigrants would think twice about swimming across to claim asylum
Look, this strawman of pretending to believe there are people who think the UK should get all of its energy exclusively from wind turbines -- it just makes youy look either stupid or bad-faith.
This is great; however, I still think that the overall best idea I have heard in a long time are the Germans generating Hydrogen from wind power. What a stupendous idea! Maybe there is a use for the Sahara after all.
There is no cheap way of storing hydrogen.
yet.
All that natural gas storage, all those pipelines: that's a pretty extensively developed system for storing gas, and a good bit of that is hydrogen - see the formula for natural gas :)
Shifting hydrogen about is dangerous. Shifting natural gas about it dandegous. Hydrogen is worse, that's all (more explosive, and smaller, so it gets through cracks that natural gas doesn't).
So hydrogen - of course it can be done.
Nevertheless, a better solution is probably to synthesize the hydrocarbon fuels we already use. The chemists have sorted all this out - the techniques work, and test factories running off solar thermal are up and running in Morocco I think it is.
You can use elec. instead of heat if you prefer. There's some question where you get the carbon from - the hydrogen, you can use water.
Hence: hydrocarbons from renewables, zero net emission, and use all the existing distribution networks. Though as I said, hydrogen direct is a possibility, but the hazards are greater, but can most definitely be addressed.
With all the wind, of both types, that comes out of Westminster we should be able to generate enough for the whole of Europe.
The critical passage is " Norway, which can store it in hydropower systems for use later. "
Unless and until there is a cheap way to store gigawatt hours of electric power windmills will remain expensive toys.
Right. Although....
"A surge in windfarm installations means Denmark could be producing half of its electricity from renewable sources well before a target date of 2020"
Occasionally they can export a little, to pay for the other half, as well as for the days when it's not windy. Yet presumably you think they should have just built another coal-fired station or two? Or perhaps a nuclear plant?
I'd say good luck to them - at least they're trying.
Hence the UK wants to connect to Norway where the cheapest power in the world can be purchased.
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/mar/26/uk-and-norway-to-build-worlds-longest-undersea-energy-interconnector
Norway can't store wind power with pumped hydro b.t.w., there is no pumped hydro-power in Norway.
All that is done is using wind power directly if cheap and closing the valves at the hydro power stations for the time being.
The same already happens in the Alps where I lived for a time. In the summer river flows off the glaciers vary during the day anyway, and holding some back for morning and evening peaks is a routine arrangement. On a daily basis not too much storage is required. I imagine in Norway due to the topography and lower population storage would be easier to achieve.
Sign in or create your Guardian account to recommend a comment