Good days for wind farm companies

WE have had some rather windy weather. This is a time when we could expect to benefit from all that “green” electricity from wind farms (WF).

If the turbines weren’t being braked for safety reasons (and presumably using “mains” electricity for that) then they were being braked because the capacity of electrical interconnectors, that connect the centres of population to the WF, was exceeded. WF are paid not to generate electricity at almost twice the cost of wholesale electricity – the so-called constraint payments (CP).

On February 14, 2020, CP stood at £18,898,000. Two days later at £24.1m, and so the WF had made £5.2m in two days. The daily totals during the storm were then as follows: £2.7m, £2.2m, £1.9m, £1.6m, £3.4m, £2.6m, £1.3m, giving a total of £21,067,121 between February 14 and 23, 2020. Total CP for 2019 £139.1m. CP for 2020, up until February 23, was £71.2m. So we have reached more than 50% of the total for 2019 in the first nine weeks of 2020. £139.1m could pay for 4,600 nurses in Wales.

Scottish & Southern Energy (SSE) is joint operator of the electricity grid in Scotland with Iberdrola – sorry “Scottish Power”. They are currently busy extending wind farms in Scotland, in areas already hemmed in by a lack of grid capacity. You would think that there is rather a conflict of interest building WF in grid-constrained areas but that’s as maybe. Ofgem seems to be waking from its slumber to investigate this particular conflict of interest.

The expensive 2.25 GW Western Link (we think you’ll find that electricity consumers are going to pay that particular bill of £1,000,000,000) continued its accident-prone life, and failed on January 10, 2020. CP were paid

to WF owners in Scotland since Western Link HVDC fault on tJanuary 10 (January 11 to January 18, 2020). The grid operators Scottish Power (Iberdrola) made £5.6m and SSE (fellow grid operator) and its partner Greencoat (sic) made £4.7m. Greencoat’s motto is “the business of renewable energy”. This looks to be a very lucrative business as long as we don’t think about who is being forced to pay this money – you and us, the electricity consumers.

Kristine Moore and Dominic Costa Llanidloes