Public pays wind farms £170m a year to cut power output

BRITISH householders last year paid £173million in compensation to wind farms that had to cut the amount of power they provided, The Daily Telegraph can reveal.

Under National Grid’s “constraint payments”, energy providers receive generous payments when told to cut output as the network “balances” Britain’s power supply. While this is to ensure supply meets demand, it can also happen when wind farms are battered by high winds and consequently produce too much energy. The Telegraph revealed yesterday that Hornsea Wind Farm was given £100,000 compensation just after it fell off the grid in a rare power outage. National Grid and Orsted, the wind farm owner, insisted this was not linked to the blackout.

National Grid, a FTSE 100 company, insists “constraint payments” keep bills down, in part because it does not have to pay out for somewhere to store or transport excess power.

The compensation, much of which is clawed back from domestic energy companies, is invariably passed on to household and business customers. Energy experts warn the payouts could soar as the country relies increasingly on wind power. Ben Guest, a specialist in renewable energy, said they could eventually rise to £1 billion a year.

The warning came after it emerged the Hornsea plant in the North Sea suffered a “technical fault” and Little Barford gas-fired station in Beds was hit by lightning last Friday, leading to the worst blackout in a decade when large swathes of the UK suffered power cuts.

National Grid yesterday handed Ofgem, the energy regulator, and ministers its initial findings into what caused the outage for more than a million homes and businesses, as well as disabling rail and road networks and leaving a hospital and airport without power. The report has not been made public.

According to National Grid’s own statistics, compensation payments average £10million a month. A spokesman said: “It’s our aim to keep costs as low as possible. Constraint payments are complex but are the cheapest way of managing the GB electricity system.”

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