Storm Ciara boosted French wind power output

Storm Ciara brought near-perfect wind power conditions to northern France - and generated nearly a quarter of the electricity used in France on Sunday.

On the whole, winds were not too strong to force many windfarms to shut down as the remnants of Storm Ciara, which battered Ireland and the UK on Saturday and Sunday, passed over the north of France.

The last vestiges of the weekend's storm has prompted Meteo France to issue orange weather alerts for high winds in the Alps-Maritime and Corsica on Tuesday morning, while coastal flooding is a danger in the northwest of the country, with the Seine-Maritimes and Eure also on alert for river floods.

According to electricity firm RTE, which operates the grid in France, the country's 8,000 turbined had produced 13,000 megawatts (MW) of power by 13.30. The all-time record for windpower production in l'Hexagone came in March 2019, when 13,288MW of power was generated by wind turbines.

In Hauts-de-France alone, which has the largest number of windfarms in the country, nearly 4,000MW of energy was produced by renewable wind power. The Grand Est produced a little over 3,000MW of power.

In neighbouring Germany, a country that relies heavily on coal, turbines in the north of the country provided nearly 63% of the country's electricity on Sunday. Meanwhile, wind power in Belgium provided 22% of its electricity, despite the fact its offshore farms were shut down for safety reasons.