History
The world's first electricity generating wind turbine was a battery charging machine installed in July 1887 by Scottish academic James Blyth to light his holiday home in Marykirk, Scotland. It was in 1951 that the first utility grid-connected wind turbine to operate in the United Kingdom was built by John Brown & Company in the Orkney Islands. In the 1970s industrial scale wind generation was first proposed as an electricity source for the United Kingdom; the higher working potential of offshore wind was recognised with a capital cost per kilowatt estimated at £150 to £250.
In 2007 the United Kingdom Government agreed to an overall European Union target of generating 20% of the EU’s energy supply from renewable sources by 2020. Each EU member state was given its own allocated target: for the United Kingdom it is 15%. This was formalised in January 2009 with the passage of the EU Renewables Directive. As renewable heat and renewable fuel production in the United Kingdom are at extremely low bases, RenewableUK estimates that this will require 35–40% of the United Kingdom's electricity to be generated from renewable sources by that date, to be met largely by 33–35 gigawatts (GW) of installed wind capacity.
In December 2007, the Government announced plans for an expansion of wind energy in the United Kingdom, by conducting a Strategic Environmental Assessment of up to 25 GW worth of wind farm offshore sites in preparation for a new round of development. These proposed sites are in addition to the 8 GW worth of sites already awarded in the 2 earlier rounds of site allocations, Round 1 in 2001 and Round 2 in 2003. Taken together it is estimated that this would result in the construction of over 7,000 offshore wind turbines.
723 MW of new wind power capacity was brought online during 2011, a 40% decrease on 2010. Only one offshore wind farm, phase 1 of the Walney Wind Farm, was completed in 2011 with a capacity of 183 MW. This compares with a total 653 MW built offshore in 2010. Onshore installations were very similar to the previous year with 540 MW completed: the largest to come on stream was the 120 MW Arecleoch Wind Farm in South Ayrshire. A highlight of 2011 was on 28 December when wind power set a record contribution to the United Kingdom's demand for electricity of 12.2%.
As of September 2012, 87 (4,907 MW) wind farm schemes are currently under construction, while another 277 (5,796 MW) projects have planning consent and 358 (over 10 GW) are in planning awaiting approval.
Read more about this topic: Wind Power In The United Kingdom
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“He wrote in prison, not a History of the World, like Raleigh, but an American book which I think will live longer than that. I do not know of such words, uttered under such circumstances, and so copiously withal, in Roman or English or any history.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“the future is simply nothing at all. Nothing has happened to the present by becoming past except that fresh slices of existence have been added to the total history of the world. The past is thus as real as the present.”
—Charlie Dunbar Broad (1887–1971)
“I believe that history might be, and ought to be, taught in a new fashion so as to make the meaning of it as a process of evolution intelligible to the young.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)