Last month wind power in Spain reached new heights. This extract from the Spanish wind energy association’s (AEE) blog ‘somos eolicos’ highlights what happened…

On 18 April wind power in Spain reached a new record by producing 317 GW hours of electricity and beating the previous record of 315 GWh recorded on 9 November 2010, according to Red Eléctrica de España (REE). Moveover, during the morning of 19 April, wind power beat previous records by covering  61.06 % of Spain’s electricity demand.

From 1-18 April, wind power produced a total of 3,094 GWh – a 42.7% increase compared to the same period the previous year. On 18 April wind covered an average of 45% of the electricity demand (317 GWh) putting it far ahead of nuclear (163 GWh), coal (72 GWh) and combined-cycle gas (44 GWh).

The new record for electricity demand met was made at 1:37 in the early hours of 19 April (61% of electricity demand with 24.384 MW), beating the earlier record of 60.46% recorded on 16 April 2011 at 3.48am.

Spain has a total installed wind power capacity of 21,674 MW – the second biggest capacity in Europe coming just after Germany’s 29,060 MW.