SONI announces record breaking clean energy streak for NI

The wind generation record was broken on 6 January, again on 30th January and then again on Saturday 5th February as Storm Corrie provided high winds leading to record generation of power.

This weekend also saw the highest ever level of electricity generation from all renewable sources, including solar, reaching 106% of all power required. The excess power generated was then exported via the Moyle Interconnector to Scotland, and to the Republic of Ireland via the North South Tie Line.

SONI Managing Director Alan Campbell warmly welcomed the news: “SONI is delighted to see the benefits of years of work by our engineers and our partners as we continue to manage world leading levels of renewable energy onto the Northern Ireland power system.

“As many of us settled down to the rugby on Saturday, SONI’s expert control centre engineers were working to manage the wind from Storm Corrie. At a quarter past one on Saturday afternoon wind

generation produced 105% of all the power that was needed in Northern Ireland – allowing us to export the rest. At lunchtime on Sunday, we then broke the record for combined wind and solar generation at a quarter to two in the afternoon.

“These incredible achievements are testament to the innovation and collaboration by SONI, the energy industry, government and the utility regulator, as we all strive to deliver a cleaner energy future.

“Communities and landowners also play a key role in this success, and we want to work with all of these stakeholders to break more records, ultimately getting NI to its 2030 target of the 70% of all power consumed from renewable sources, and yet further again to achieve our Net Zero targets.”

The statistics make for impressive reading.

On Saturday at 13.15, 1059 megawatts (MW) of electricity was generated by wind, which beats the s record set the previous weekend of 1,043MW.

On Tuesday a new Northern Ireland peak total renewables record was set of 1,084MW, with 1,015MW coming from wind and 69. MW from solar.

On Saturday Storm Corrie was responsible for record breaking wind generation in the Republic of Ireland wind too. Resulting in an all-island record of 4584 MW, again at a quarter past one in the afternoon, (beating the Feb 2021 record of 4489 MW).