Energy Production
Using wind to produce electricity has become more and more common in recent years as we look for renewable sources of electricity to replace coal, oil and gas. However, we cannot guarantee wind as it naturally fluctuates over the course of time, for example some days are windier than others. This means its energy production fluctuates massively depending on how much wind there is. So, although a wind turbine may have a capacity of 1.5MW, it is very unlikely it will produce this, this is just the maximum it could produce if it ran all of the time. For this example, if may only produce 0.5MW in a year, depending on the wind speeds. [1] Wind energy production varies for each county and each continent.
The EU:
51% of new installed power capacity in the EU during 2016 came from wind power, showing how much wind power is developing.[2] Also, in the first half of 2017 (from January to the end of June), wind energy provided 11.5% of the EU’s electricity demand. With 10.1% coming from onshore wind turbines and 1.4% from offshore wind. The capacity factor during this time period was that wind power could provide 24.7% of the EU’s demand, this shows how efficiency of wind turbines and unreliable wind can affect the energy production.[3]
Germany:
During 2016, 44% of new wind power capacity installed in the EU came from Germany, making it the largest wind energy market in Europe.[2]
Denmark:
During 2017, 43% of Denmark’s electricity demand was supplied by wind power. Denmark has some of the best wind conditions and therefore has utilised this to meet its energy demands with a high percentage of wind power. Its aim is to have 50% of the country’s energy demand met by wind power by 2020.[4]
UK:
Currently, the UK has 6995 onshore and 1660 offshore wind turbines, together these has an overall capacity of 18,443MW. This is enough to power about 12 million households.[5] On windy days, wind power can meet about 20% of the UK’s energy demand.[6]
North America:
The percentage of total U.S energy consumption provided by wind power is only 1.9%.[7] Since the energy demands in the U.S are huge, this is still a lot of wind energy produced. In fact, the total installed wind capacity in 2017 was 84,944 MW,[8] larger than the capacity of the UK. However, the eastern half of the United States does not have sufficient wind speeds for the production of wind power,[7] which reduces the amount of energy produced from wind massively and explains the low percentage of the energy demand that it covers.
References:
[1] https://sciencing.com/much-power-wind-turbine-generate-6917667.html
[3] https://windeurope.org/about-wind/daily-wind/
[4] http://denmark.dk/en/green-living/wind-energy
[5] http://www.renewableuk.com/page/UKWEDhome
[6] http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk
[7] http://instituteforenergyresearch.org/topics/encyclopedia/wind/
[8] https://www.awea.org/wind-energy-facts-at-a-glance