No need to worry, apparently, or so Baroness Worthington assured the Lords yesterday

Baroness Worthington (Labour)

"My Lords, demand for energy has fallen so far this year. In the first half of this year we saw a 17.5% reduction in gas demand and a 5.7% reduction in electricity demand. People are walking around today in T-shirts. There is no need for the hysterical headlines that we are seeing about closures in plant. We have 25% of our energy today coming from wind. The question is: does the Minister agree that it is time to create an energy security board so that we can stop the alarmist headlines, have a mature debate and get our energy security and demand management policy back on track?"

I'm sure we're all relieved!

I think Baroness Worthington (Labour) is pushing her luck. Using gridwatch data for the last week, 15th October to date the maximum contribution for wind is indeed 24.1% that was on 18/10/2013 @ 05:35 the single instance it exceeded 24%. As it was the early hours of a Saturday then demand a tad more than 24GW. The actual output from wind was 5.83GW. The figures for now are 5.42GW and 13.75%. In the same time frame wind has been less than 7% as often as it has been above 20%, this is at a time of year when temperatures aren't low and it is generally known for being windier than average.