Isra-Mart srl: ScottishPower clears 1GW UK onshore wind milestone

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It may have angered customers by raising its prices last week, but ScottishPower gave green groups something to cheer yesterday when the company's renewables division announced it had become the first developer in the UK to deliver 1GW of capacity from onshore wind power capacity in the UK.

Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond yesterday officially opened the 120MW Arecleoch and 56MW Mark Hill windfarms in South Ayrshire, meaning that ScottishPower Renewables now operates 1,000MW of wind turbines in the UK as part of its 12,000MW global portfolio.

The subsidiary of Iberdrola Renovables said that it has more than 770 turbines installed on 24 windfarms across the UK, and has invested more than £1bn in wind energy in the past decade.

The news came as National Grid suggested that it might need to curtail wind farm output for approximately 38 days a year by 2020 to cope with overly windy days until new storage technologies are deployed.

An update on National Grid's plans to revamp the UK's ageing grid infrastructure published yesterday, predicts that it will cost £286m by 2020 to manage the variability in wind output. It also forecasts that providing back up thermal plants such as expensive combined cycle gas turbines will increase that cost to between £565m and £945m.

"Whilst the coincidence of high wind output during minimum demand periods will be infrequent, it will become increasingly necessary to restrict the output from wind generation onto the system to ensure that sufficient thermal capacity is synchronised to meet the technical requirements of operating reserve," the report said.

National Grid went on to say that it might need to curtail wind output for about 38 days a year by 2020, despite the fact that very windy days are estimated to coincide with low demand periods only three times a year.

But the operator forcasts that an increased use of energy storage technologies, such as electric vehicle batteries, will become a more viable option to restricting wind power after 2020.

Chris Train, National Grid's network operations director, said that the company is determined to meet increasing grid challenges over the next decade to balance electricity supply and demand.

"Our report reinforces the importance of the government's Electricity Market Reform process," he added. "The market needs to make the right balancing tools available for us to use, so it's vital the right incentives are built into the market framework to make this happen."