Volatile weather saw levels of wind generation across Europe hit record levels last month.
New data from energy market analyst, EnAppSys, showed that wind power amounted to an average output of 85.4GW – equivalent to over two hundred 400MW coal units of power generation – in February 2020.
Wind speeds were consistently high across Europe last month and this led to exceptionally high levels of wind generation. As a result, the levels of electricity produced by wind farms in this period increased by 68 per cent from February 2019 levels.
This comes as monthly records for wind generation have been broken each month since November 2019.
In addition, wind output as a proportion of total generation in Europe reached a record 27 per cent in February 2020, significantly higher than the previous high of 18 per cent in February 2019.
The average wind generation last month increased by 61 per cent compared to February 2019. The maximum output increased by only 40 per cent. This means that February 2020 was windier than last year, but a higher wind capacity also contributed to the increase in wind output.
Looking at country-specific wind generation, the highest wind output for February occurred by far in Germany, at an average of 29.1GW over the course of the month.
This is the highest ever monthly wind generation in Germany and was followed by Great Britain (9.6GW average) and France (8GW average). Although these were the countries with the highest output, it was Denmark, Ireland and Germany that had the highest share of generation as a proportion of its demand from wind farms at around 50 per cent.
