Wind farms paid £100m to switch power off

Firms receive 40pc more cash when turbines turned off to enable National Grid to manage energy supplies

WIND farms were paid more than £100million last year to switch off their turbines and not produce electricity, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.

The payments – equivalent to £2 million a week – were made to the big energy firms that own the giant wind farms. Incredibly, the wind farms receive on average 40 per cent more cash when they are switched off than when they are producing electricity, according to an analysis of official figures.

The think tank which carried out the study said it was “a scandal” that the big energy companies were more profitable when turned off.

The turbines have to be shut down at certain times because Britain’s electricity network is unable to cope with the power they produce. The wind farm owners then receive compensation – called “constraint payments” – for not producing electricity. The money is paid out by the National Grid but is ultimately charged to consumers and added on to electricity bills.

The scale of the constraint payments has ballooned in the past five years, according to the Renewable Energy Foundation (REF), which carried out the research.

According to the REF, constraint payments totalled a record £108 million in 2017, compared with less than £6 million in 2012. In the past five years, wind farm owners have been paid £367 million in constraint payments. Almost all the payments were made to wind farms in Scotland, which has seen a rapid growth in the industry.

Dr Lee Moroney, REF’S lead researcher, said: “They make more per megawatt hour [unit of electricity generated] when they are told to stop generating than when they are selling electricity to consumers.” REF research shows that wind farms are currently being paid compensation of about £70 per megawatt hour (MWH) to switch off. In comparison they are typically paid £49 per MWH in a consumer subsidy when producing electricity. The subsidy was introduced to encourage a growth in renewable energy source and is added on to household electricity bills.

Whether supplying electricity or not, the wind farms also receive the wholesale price for the electricity they produce. A spokesman for the National Grid said: “National Grid… can sometimes ask generators to come on or off the grid to keep the system balanced – ensuring that there is energy across the UK whenever and wherever it is needed.”

Emma Pinchbeck, Renewableuk’s executive director, said: “Wind farms are compensated because being told to switch off means a significant loss of revenue from generating power, and causes wear and tear on the turbines. The wind industry has been calling for Government to make modernising the grid a priority.”

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