The storms in Europe last weekend did not just bring chilly weather – they also brought free energy to Germany.
When energy output goes into the negative – as it did on Saturday – power companies must either shut down their plants or pay consumers to take the energy off their grids.
Because of the sheer amount of wind power generated by German turbines (about 39,409 megawatts, which is the equivalent of 40 nuclear reactors), power companies were forced to pay their customers the most amount of money for the energy since Christmas 2012, according to Bloomberg.
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In a press release published by Wind Europe, the company says that European wind energy broke a new record on October 28th after almost a quarter (24.6%) of the EU’s electricity demand was powered by wind. This is a significant improvement from the previous record of 19.9% that was set earlier in the month.
This is not the first time this year that European wind power has blown away the rest of the world. In July, Scotland broke a renewable energy record by generating the equivalent of 118% of the nation’s electricity for six days – solely through wind power captured between January and June.
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