Strongest April on record for wind energy in Ireland

Wind energy monthly report - 32% of Ireland's power provided in April.

Wind Energy Ireland has released its April Wind Energy report, which shows that wind energy provided 32 per cent of Ireland’s electricity in April 2022, up 7 per cent on April 2021.

This was the most power ever provided by wind in the month of April and follows a strong first quarter where wind provided around 39 per cent of Ireland’s electricity.

The large volume of wind energy produced in April helped to push down the average wholesale price of electricity for the month of April to €218.26 from its record high in March.

However, this is still a 155 per cent increase in prices from April 2021 and reflects Ireland’s continued reliance on expensive imported fossil fuels.

Noel Cunniffe, CEO of Wind Energy Ireland, said: “Every month wind energy is cutting our carbon emissions and helping to insulate Irish consumers from the worst effects of our dependence on expensive imported gas.

“Every new wind farm and solar farm connecting to the electricity system helps to make Ireland more energy independent. We need to accelerate the development of clean, cheap, renewable energy to push fossil fuels out of the electricity market.

“Our planning system must be reformed and properly resourced to ensure that the renewable energy projects needed by the Climate Action Plan can get properly, but quickly, examined and we can move forward with getting those projects built.”

The results of this report are based on EirGrid’s SCADA data compiled by MullanGrid and on market data provided by ElectroRoute. This is the third in what will be a continuing series of monthly reports from Wind Energy Ireland. This series will play an important role in progressing the development of wind energy as an energy source in Ireland.

ENDS

Note: A megawatt-hour (MWh) is a unit of electricity. A normal Irish household will use approximately 4.6 megawatt-hours of electricity in a single year. A 3 MW turbine producing electricity at maximum capacity for an hour will produce 3 megawatt-hours. A gigawatt-hour (GWh) is 1,000 MWh.