An unusually windy day gave Scandinavia another chance to show off its global superiority in clean energy yesterday. On July 9, Denmark’s wind farms generated more than enough power to meet nationwide electricity demands—with a 16% surplus of energy during the day and a whopping 40% surplus overnight.
An unusually windy day gave Scandinavia another chance to show off its global superiority in clean energy yesterday. On July 9, Denmark’s wind farms generated more than enough power to meet nationwide electricity demands—with a 16% surplus of energy during the day and a whopping 40% surplus overnight.
The extra energy didn’t go to waste; it was exported to Germany, Norway, and Sweden via interconnectors between the countries’ electricity grids. (The Germans haven’t always loved those interconnectors, by the way.)
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“It shows that a world powered 100% by renewable energy is no fantasy,” European Wind Energy Association spokesman Oliver Joy told the Guardian.
According to The Guardian, the website energinet.dk, which gives real-time breakdowns of Denmark’s energy production, showed that the country’s wind turbines were not even operating at full capacity when they generated the surpluses.
For all of 2014, Danish wind turbines, most of which are onshore, supplied the equivalent of 39% of the country’s annual electricity consumption.
