Renewables top 42GW, generate almost a third of total power in spring

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Drax power station: generating a big chunk of UK renewable power. Pic: Creative Commons/Paul Glazzard

UK renewable generation capacity reached 42.2GW in the three months to 30 June, up 10% year on year, according to government figures.

Renewables generated 31.7% of all power generated, a record as a percentage of total generation, if not total output.

Offshore wind drove more than half of the increase in capacity, and as a result, generation from offshore wind rose almost a fifth (19%), or 0.8TWh year on year.

Biomass increased 0.6TWh or almost 9% as output for the same quarter in 2017 was affected by an outage at Drax, which generates most of the UK’s biomass-derived power by burning wood pellets shipped from Georgia.

Output from onshore wind fell 12% of 0.7TWh due to lower wind speeds.

The figures show bioenergy (mostly from burning wood) had the largest share of generation (35 per cent), 22 per cent came from onshore wind, 20 per cent from offshore wind, 19 per cent from solar PV and 3.6 per cent from hydro.

See the data here.

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