Britain beats Denmark in offshore wind farms

Varsha LohltaOct 21 2008

Windy Britain ‘leading the way’

Britain is now leading the world in generating wind power and is on track to meet its renewable goals. The offshore wind farms now have the potential to power around 300,000 UK homes. Offshore wind is extremely important to increase the amount of energy from the renewable sources. This will undoubtedly help the country in the fight against the climate change and in turn will secure UK’s energy supplies. Presently there are 174 wind farms operating in the UK, and only seven of them are offshore.

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UK has overtaken Denmark to become the leader of offshore wind farms. The Prime Minister quoted:

We are now getting 3 gigawatts of our electricity capacity from wind power. That's enough to power more than 1.5 million homes. Offshore wind makes up 20 per cent of that capacity and the wind farms I am visiting today are the ones that have made the UK the world's number one for offshore wind power.

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But the development has another side to it as well. One of the major drawbacks of wind energy is that it requires extra reserve capacity to compensate for the intermittency of its power output. The cost of harnessing the offshore wind power is very high and at the same time involves risks. For more greener results, UK first needs to trim down these costs, raise performance and improve the economic viability of the off shore wind power.

Via: The Independent