Wind Energy - Overview

Wind power is one of the world’s fastest growing energy sources. Already wind turbines with a total generating capacity of over 30,000 MW have been built around Europe. This figure is expected to exceed 1.2 million MW by the year 2020.

Over the past ten years wind power capacity has been expanding at an annual rate averaging more than 30%. In contrast, the nuclear industry is growing at a rate of less than 1% whilst coal has not grown at all since the late 1980’s.

Europe is the centre of this young and high-tech industry and home to 90% of the world’s manufacturers of medium and large wind turbines.

Ireland has a wind resource that is the envy of the rest of Europe. A wind turbine erected in typical Irish conditions produces twice as much electricity as one at a typical German site. Germany boasted over 14,000 MW of wind energy installations at the end of 2003 whereas Ireland had just 190 MW installed. Most of the wind farms in Ireland currently employ less than 20 turbines ranging in size from several hundred kilowatts to 2.5 MW. Larger wind farms and larger turbines are planned as developers strive to achieve the increased reliability, availability and efficiency that modern wind turbine technology has to offer. Ireland’s vast potential means that, whilst it would be a challenge, we could provide 30% of our electricity from wind power by 2020.