UK offshore wind generation increased 30% to 17.4TWh in 2015, up from 13.4TWh in 2014 according to government figures.
The statistics, which were released today, show that offshore wind’s load factor rose by 4% in 2015 to 41% from 37% the previous year.
Overall, renewable energy’s share of UK electricity generation was a record 24.7% in 2015, up 5.6 percentage points from 19.1% in 2014.
Renewables generated 83.3TWh in 2015, a 29% increase on the 64.7% in 2014. Solar was up 86%, bioenergy grew 28% and wind generation up 26%, the figures show.
Installed capacity for renewables hit 30GW last year, a 22% increase on 2014, while renewable energy met 22.3% of gross electricity consumption.
In 2015, onshore wind generation rose by 24% to 23.TWh from 18.6TWh, while its load factor averaged 30%, up 3.4% due to higher average wind speed of 0.6 knots.
Generation from solar increased to 7.6TWh from 4TWh, while hydro increased 7.4% to 6.3TWh. Bioenergy hit 29TWh, up from 22.7TWh in 2014.
The government said 35% of renewable energy generation was from bioenergy, 28% from onshore wind, 21% from offshore wind, 9.1% solar PV and 7.6% from hydro.
In terms of capacity, onshore wind and solar accounted for about 30% each, bioenergy and offshore wind about 17% each and hydro 5.8%.
RenewableUK deputy chief executive Maf Smith said: “These excellent figures show that renewable energy is delivering huge amounts of clean electricity right now, and that overall energy costs are coming down – including wind energy.”
Image: Dong Energy’s Westermost Rough wind farm came online in 2015 (Dong)
