Portugal

Within a sustainable development framework, wind energy in Portugal during 2013 continued the trend of the previous years and increased its influence in the Portuguese electricity system. This influence was felt in several ways. Portugal added 192 MW of installed wind power capacity and reached 4,709 MW of wind generation. This represents 23% of renewable energy capacity in the country. With this amount of wind capacity, 11.9 TWh was supplied to the electricity system during the year (1), (2). These increases resulted in a wind power penetration rate of 24% in electricity consumption, rising 4% compared to 2012. The high value of wind penetration was influenced by the especially favorable wind conditions observed in mountain areas where the majority of the installed wind capacity is concentrated. It is important to notice that this amount of penetration is only exceeded worldwide by Denmark. The generation of electricity from renewable energy sources was 57% of the national consumption (which is a new record in Portugal). The individual renewable contribution in Portugal was different from last year. After an atypical year in hydro power production in 2012 (due to the fifth driest year of the last 80 years), the contribution of this renewable energy source grew 17% during 2013 reaching 27 % of electrical demand. Due to this increase, wind energy decreased 12% in its share within the renewable energy production (3). The high contribution from the endogenous resources enabled Portugal to reduce to 6% dependency on foreign energy in meeting consumption after reaching as high as 16% in 2012 (1). Total electricity consumption in 2013 was 50.6 TWh, which corresponds to a slight increase of 3% compared to 2012 (1), (2). Despite the economic recession that continues in the country and the energy efficiency measures that were implemented in the last years, this small increase reverses the downward trend observed in the last few years. In 2013, the Portuguese government approved a new National Renewable Energy Action Plan (NREAP). Compared to the previous NREAP 2010, the 2013 NREAP reduced the wind power capacity targets to 5,300 MW compared to the previous 6,875 MW (4)