While the weather last month spurred many complaints from people hoping for sunshine and warmth, July in Belgium was ideal for wind power production.
Figures from high-voltage grid operator Elia have shown that July generated the most wind power. Overall, 40% more wind power was generated compared to July last year.
On offshore wind farms – the wind power generated at sea – 692 gigawatt-hours (GWh) were generated, well above the previous record (405 GWh in 2021). On land, this figure reached 464 GWh, an increase of almost 60%, amounting to a total production of 1,156 GWh.
While more energy is produced by wind power in spring and autumn, for the summer months, this is a new record. The previous record was set in August 2021, when a total of 787 GWh was produced, meaning the latest record beat this one by a large margin.
Sunless solar power
Elia noted that solar power also performed well in July 2023: despite the lack of sunshine hours, the figure remained narrowly below that of July last year, which was much brighter.
The company explained that this is mainly due to more solar panels being added, meaning that fewer hours of sunshine are needed to reach the same figure. Some 905 Gigawatt hours were generated, which is just slightly lower than last year (936 GWh), but higher than the average of the last five years (623 GWh).
Solar panels on house. Credit: Belga/ Kurt Desplenter
The energy produced by both solar and wind together accounted for 35% of demand last month. Until Thursday, solar and wind power have already provided 12.7 TWh of energy this year. For the same period last year, the counter stood at 10.3 TWh.
On Whit Monday this year, a record amount of electricity was generated by wind and sun at around midday, enough to cover just about the entire electricity consumption of Belgium for the first time ever.
