Wind farms paid £3m a day to stop generating any electricity
WIND farms were paid up to £3million per day to switch off their turbines and not produce electricity last week, The Sunday Telegraph can disclose.
Energy firms were handed more than £12million in compensation following a fault with a major power line carrying electricity to England from turbines in Scotland.
The payouts, which will ultimately be added on to consumer bills, were between 25 per cent and 80 per cent more than the firms would have received had they been producing electricity, according to an analysis of official figures.
The payments have prompted questions in Parliament, as one charity said consumers were having to fund the consequences of an “excessive” number of onshore wind farms, which can overwhelm the electricity grid.
In December an analysis by the Renewable Energy Foundation (REF) revealed that the operators of 86 wind farms in Britain were handed more than £136million in so-called “constraint payments” last year – a new record.
REF has warned that consumers are left to foot the bill for wind farm operators having to reduce their output as a result of an “excessive” number of turbines in Scotland leaving the electricity grid unable to cope on occasions such as when there are strong winds.
The Western Link, a 530-mile highvoltage cable running from the west coast of Scotland to the north coast of Wales, was built to help overcome the problem by providing more capacity to transport green energy from onshore wind farms in Scotland to England and Wales. But the line, which became fully operational in 2018, has been dogged by difficulties.
In the latest incident, it “tripped” on Jan 10, prompting a spike in the number of wind farms being asked to shut down temporarily because they were producing more energy than could be transported to consumers’ homes. On the following day – last Saturday – 50 wind farms were asked to stop producing electricity, and given a total of £2.5 million in compensation to do so. Last Wednesday, the figure was as high as £3.3million, paid by National Grid’s Electricity System Operator (ESO) arm.
This weekend the payments continued to be made as the power line remained out of use amid an investigation into the cause of the fault.
Dr John Constable, the director of REF, which first exposed the scale of constraint payments, said: “The Scottish Government has permitted excessive and environmentally damaging growth in wind power north of the
Border, which has put the electricity system under great strain and burdened English and Welsh consumers not only with constraint payments but also with the additional expense of a £1billion interconnector that is itself proving unreliable.”
Viscount Ridley, the science writer and former businessman, has now put down a series of written questions in the House of Lords about the Western Link and its cost to taxpayers.
However, a National Grid ESO spokesman insisted that the cost of managing the amount of electricity in the grid amounted to just “£1 of the average annual household bill of £554.”
“The alternative to constraint payments is building more electricity transmission assets, which is more costly, meaning consumers’ bills would rise,” the spokesman added.
Luke Clark, director of strategic communications at RenewableUK, which represents companies, said: “Since the turn of the year, wind energy has been the UK’s biggest source of electricity and would have provided more if the grid were operating at full power. Wind generators are compensated as being forced to stop generating because of grid failures means a significant loss of revenue. Bringing the Western Link fully back online as soon as possible is the best solution for renewable energy generators and consumers”.
National Grid, a separate entity to National Grid ESO, confirmed that the link was “currently unavailable for service” while the cause of the outage was being investigated.