Wind power link delay is 70m blow for consumers – Times

Delays to a £1 billion subsea cable to bring surplus Scottish wind energy to England and Wales will cost consumers at least £70 million because they will have to pay for turbines to be switched off until it is finished.

National Grid and Scottish Power, the companies behind the new Western Link or “Bootstrap”, face financial penalties from Ofgem for late delivery of the connection, which has been affected by problems making the high-voltage cabling.

The new power link runs from Hunterston in Ayrshire to the Wirral, a subsea route of about 239 miles, then underground for 20 miles to Deeside, over the Welsh border in Flintshire. It is designed to enable the export of surplus electricity from Scotland, which has built so many wind farms that it often generates more power than is needed by Scottish consumers.

The existing electricity links across the border do not have enough capacity to export all the excess, resulting in Scottish wind farms or other power plants being paid millions of pounds to switch off turbines. These “constraint payments” ultimately reach consumers in their energy bills.

The new Western Bootstrap was approved by Ofgem in 2012 to help to tackle the problem and originally was due to be completed by late 2015. It is now not expected to be finished until later this year.

National Grid and Prysmian, the cable manufacturer, declined to explain the delay, but it is understood that one section of cabling was identified as faulty in 2014 and had to be remade, while poor weather may have hampered work at sea.

Ofgem announced yesterday that it was delaying the levies on bills that recoup the companies’ costs, so that they did not benefit from the cash before they actually needed to spend it.

Consumers are still expected to face about £70 million in extra costs from “constraint payments” to wind farms for switching off turbines. Ofgem documents show that the figure is based on the estimated cost of a six-month delay, despite the project running almost two years late, implying that the true extra cost to consumers will be much higher.

Ofgem confirmed that if it found National Grid and Scottish Power had breached licence conditions by delivering the project late, it would “consider taking enforcement action, which could result in the imposition of financial penalties”.

National Grid said it would be reviewing the project with its partners to “look at what factors may have been involved in the delay”.