The UK can now generate enough electricity from wind turbines to power a record 26 million homes, after the opening of a new onshore wind farm in Scotland.
Britain's total wind generation capacity has risen to 30.3 gigawatts (GW) with the start of the Viking wind farm off the Shetland Islands, owned by FTSE 100 green power company SSE PLC (LSE:SSE).
The 103 turbines of the Viking wind farm can generate a total of 443 megawatts (MW), enough to provide all the power for half a million homes, or roughly the needs for a city the size of Birmingham.
Adding this power to the national grid has lifted Britain's total past the 30GW threshold, according to RenewableUK’s EnergyPulse data, which is enough to meet the annual power needs of almost 90% of UK homes.
SSE said this could also cut the UK's carbon emissions by more than 35 million tonnes a year.
Wind power is the largest source of clean power in the UK, which last year derived 46.4% of electricity from all renewable technologies combined, according to government figures, up from 41.5% in 2022.
RenewableUK noted that it took the UK 26 years to install the first 15GW of wind energy.
"To double that to 30GW in just seven years represents a tremendous success for the industry," said executive director of policy Ana Musat.
"As the latest record-breaking figures from the government show, wind is the backbone of our future energy system and a key driver of our transition away from expensive and volatile fossil fuels to become a clean energy superpower."
RenewableUK said its research also shows doubling the UK’s onshore wind capacity by the end of the decade would boost the economy by £45 billion and create 27,000 jobs.
Further increasing the amount of offshore wind in the electricity system by 2035 would leave consumers around £68 a year better off, it claimed.
SSE's Viking is the largest onshore wind farm to be built in the UK in nearly ten years, and will be eclipsed by the Dogger Bank wind farm off the north-east coast of England, which is being built in three 1.2 GW phases.
Once fully complete in 2026, Dogger Bank, which is 40% owned by SSE Renewables, 40% by Norway's Equinor and 20% by Italian-Norwegian joint venture Vårgrønn, will be capable of powering up to 6 million homes annually.