Made in Denmark: Wind Power
Denmark is the dominant player in the off-shore wind turbine market.
BTM Consult estimate by placing wind turbines along the coastline of Europe the capacity of wind turbines installed in the continent could be multiplied by four.
Denmark is also the top consumer of windpower generating over 20% of its electricity from wind turbines. This compares to just 0.5% globally. Spain which currently generates 10% of its electricity from wind power, it has recently stated it will generate 20% by 2010.
The Danish utilised the oil shocks of the 1970s to invest in alternatives allowing it to become the world leader in wind power.
posted by James at 2:07 am
5 Comments:
Good luck with this blog James - I'm very impressed.
Hi Sabik,
Great to see your comments, we are trying to get planning permission to put up a wind turbine here in the east of england, and just had the application rejected as it would pose a danger to gliders...do you have a contact for any gliders near you and the Cowley Wind Farm? It would be interesting to hear their comments....
Thanks Sam
Quite a nice site you have here I found some of the facts about wind power very useful for my school work. Thanks and keep up the good work.
It is a complete nonsense to say that Denmark generates 20% of its electricty from windpower, because it depends on importing (mostly coal-fired) electricity from Germany when the wind doesn't blow (or blows to hard) and exporting its surplus at below cost when conditions are just right. A more realistic example of what is possible is Ireland which had to slap a moratorium on windpower when it reached 5% because it was making the grid system unstable. You have to look at the total system.
When you say Denmark generates 20% of its electricity with wind power, are you also saying they were able to shutdown the same amount of other generating sources? I heard somewhere that, even though Denmark's installed all these wind generators, they've shutdown only about 5% of other generation. Other generation must be available to fill in when wind is not available. Thank you.
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