Scottish wind turbines sent more than 1.2 million megawatt hours of electricity to the National Grid in March, according to new analysis of data from WeatherEnergy by WWF Scotland.



In a news release on Monday the environmental group said that turbines produced enough electricity to meet, on average, the electrical needs of 136 percent of Scottish households, equivalent to 3.3 million homes. This represented an increase of 81 percent compared to March 2016.



"Given this March wasn't as windy as it has been in some previous years, this year's record output shows the importance of continuing (to) increase capacity by building new wind farms," Lang Banks, director of WWF Scotland, said in a statement.



"As well as helping to power our homes and businesses, wind power supports thousands of jobs and continues to play an important role in Scotland's efforts to address global climate change by avoiding millions of tonnes of carbon emissions every year."



The Scottish government says that Scotland is home to 25 percent of Europe's offshore wind resources and that, overall, renewables are Scotland's "single largest contributor to electricity generation."

Globally, the International Energy Agency has described wind energy as "developing towards a mainstream, competitive and reliable power technology."



Commenting on today's analysis, WeatherEnergy's Karen Robinson said that it was "massively impressive" how Scotland had "steadily grown its wind power output."



In other wind power news, this weekend saw India's Ministry of New and Renewable Energy state that over 5,400 megawatts (MW) of wind power capacity was added in India in 2016-17, smashing a 4,000 MW target. The state of Andhra Pradesh led the way with 2,190 MW of capacity added, with Gujarat adding 1,275 MW.