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Renewable Energy News

MONDAY 04 APRIL, 2011 |

Wind Power Spain's Major Electricity Source In March

by Energy Matters

While countries like Australia still rely on emissions intensive coal for the majority of power generation, Spain is showing the rest of the world it is possible to drastically reduce the use of the filthy fossil fuel through the use of renewable energy sources.

In March, wind power accounted for 21% of Spain's electricity generation, with coal at just 12.9%. The new record saw generation of 4,738 gigawatt hours of wind energy based electricity produced, a 5% increase on March 2010. says the country's power network operator Red Electrica (REE).

José Donoso, President of the Spanish Wind Energy Association (AEE) said of the achievement, "This historic milestone reached by wind energy shows that this technology is not only indigenous, clean and competitive, but also capable of supplying already 13 Million average Spanish households".

Mr. Donoso said March´s wind power generation could have supplied all the electricity needs for Portugal for the month.

REE says renewable energy supplied 42.2% of the electricity demand in March. Even with wind power's mighty contribution, this was below the 48.5% registered in 2010, due to the fact that hydro-electric production last year was much higher.

Spain is one of the world's largest wind power producers and the fourth largest net exporter of electricity and the nation exported 8.3 terawatt hours of electricity last year. Even with the large proportion of renewables, electricity prices in the Spanish market were among the cheapest in Europe in 2010.

By the end of 2010, the country had installed capacity of 20,676 MW of wind turbines. Much of Spain's success in building such a large wind energy industry is due to the country's feed in tariff program. However, solar power still remains a bit player in the nation, accounting for just 2% of generation.