COPENHAGEN: Wind production in Denmark reached 14.1TWh in 2015, providing 42.1% of electricity, thanks to a windy year and 184MW of additions.
The figures coming out of Denmark remain as the pinnacle in the global wind market.
In 2015, wind production exceeded 14TWh for the first time on records, which met 42.1% of Denmark’s electricity production.
It beat the previous record set just a year earlier in 2014 when 39% of demand was met by wind capacity.
The new record was set thanks to Denmark’s installed capacity reaching over 5GW for the first time, having added 184MW during the year. It was also helped by 2015 being “a windy year” according to grid operator Energinet.dk.
The share of wind could have been even higher, Energinet said, as production was hampered by outages at the Anholt and Horns Rev 2 offshore projects.
Denmark’s figures are even more remarkable on an ultra-local scale. “For 1,460 hours of the year’s 8,760 hours (16.6%), the western part of the Danish electricity system (DK1) produced more wind power than the total consumption in Western Denmark,” Energinet said.
The country’s system is split into two market areas: DK1 the larger area in western Denmark, and DK2 to the east including Copenhagen.
“For the first time ever, the Western Danish power grid was operated without supply of energy from central power stations for 24 consecutive hours. That has never happened before,” Energinet explained.
For 24 hours on 2 September, residents in Jutland and Funen (western Denmark) were supplied with electricity produced by wind turbines, solar panels, combined heat and power plants and imports. In the same period, residents in eastern Denmark received 97% of the electricity from the same sources.
Grid challenges
Last summer, Windpower Monthly investigated how a wind surplus in Denmark and northern Europe exposed grid challenges to the region.
For two hours on Friday 10 July, wind power generated the equivalent of 140% of national electricity consumption, surpassing the previous record of 135%.
On the day of the record, Denmark’s surplus was exported to Sweden, Norway and Germany — a net exchange of 6,010MWh.
Exceptional to this trend was a period of modest importing from Germany into western Denmark (energy zone DK1) amounting to 200MW between midnight and 6am on on 10 July, during the period of surplus.
Danish transmission system operator (TSO) Energinet explained the import was a response to higher than expected wind production in the north European region. This exposed a bottleneck in transmission that limits exchange capacity through the German-DK1 interconnection.
