UK wind record broken – New Amazon project in Ireland

The UK’s grid operator National Grid has confirmed that Storm Ellen’s gales brought the highest ever share of wind power on the electricity system.

It said that at 1am on 22 August, wind fed 13.5GW into the grid, accounting for 59.1% of Britain’s power demand.

The previous record was at 5am on March 8 2020, when wind made up 58.3% of the electricty mix, with output at 15,206MW. The peak output record still stands at 17,129MW from January 2 2020.

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Amazon has announced a new 115MW wind farm in Ireland as it pushes ahead with its plan to draw all its power from renewable energy by 2025. 

The new project in County Galway in the west of the country is due online in 2022 and will be the technology giant’s largest wind farm in Ireland.

It adds to an existing 23.2MW project in County Cork, which comes online in September 2020, and a 66.5MW wind farm in County Donegal, due online in early 2022.

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Infrastructure investment manager NTR has completed the refinancing of a €370 million, 220MW onshore wind portfolio for a fund that helps build and run projects. 

The company’s NTR Wind 1 LP fund covers projects in the UK and Ireland.

The five lead lenders backing the scheme are AIB, LBBW, NatWest / Ulster Bank, Santander and Siemens Financial Services through Siemens Bank. 

The finacial package includes loan facilities for €350 million and around €20 million of revolving credit and debt service reserve.

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Industry veteran Thomas Karst will join Siemens Gamesa as head of offshore sales and projects from October 1, 2020. 

He was previously chief sales officer at MHI Vestas, programme director at Ørsted (then known as Dong Energy), director and partner at Wood Mackenzie (then Make Consulting) and president of offshore for Nordex.