In the early hours of today (Spain local time), Spain’s wind farms set a new wind power production record, generating 54.1% of the nation’s total electricity demand at 3:50AM. The wind farms were forced to reduce production twice in the last 24 hours as production exceeded demand.
The Control Center of Renewable Power Grid (CEFR) has only been forced to reduce wind production four times since its establishment, on 4 March 2008, on 15 November 2009 and twice today.
According to the Spanish Wind Energy Association, wind power production for the month of December in Spain has experienced growth of 23.9% over the same period last year, representing 19.2% of total generation.
Along with hydroelectric and solar power, 34% of total electricity production in December has been from renewable sources. For the full year, production of energy from renewable sources has reached 26%.
Spain is the fourth largest manufacturer in the world of solar power components and exports 80 percent of this output to Germany. Spain increased its domestic solar power capacity by 2GW in 2008 and the country’s total solar power capacity was 3 GW by end of 2009.
Spain’s success in building clean energy infrastructure is largely attributable to generous feed in tariffs and given how quickly the solar energy and wind power sector has developed, demonstrates the challenge of switching from filthy coal fired power generation to renewable energy may not be as daunting as some believe it to be.
