Power payments are gone with the wind
SIR, – George Herraghty (P&J, December 30) highlights the problem, not
uncommon in winter, of very low wind power output.
Ironically, within days the system can be faced with the opposite – too
much wind for local demand and for the Scottish grid to transport to
consumers further afield.
With the system unable to cope with this excess, many wind farms are
offered “constraint payments” to reduce their output. Strange though it
will seem, a wind farm can name its price and in fact makes more per unit
constrained off the network than when sold normally to a consumer.
Consequently, there is a perverse incentive to build in such areas.
This incentive is not small. The Stronelairg, situated in the wild
Monadhliath mountains and commissioned in late 2018, received constraint
payments of more than £11 million in its fast year of operation. For one
day alone, December 29 2019, 29 lucky wind farms shared a Christmas bonus
of more than £1.8m to throw their electricity away.
The total cost is also nationally significant. Since 2010 when constraint
payments started, onshore wind in Scotland has received over £6600m to
reduce output.
Despite the financial impact of these payments on all consumers’ bills,
the Scottish Government continues to approve more, bigger, industrial wind
farms in the same geographical areas.
Some will say that more grid should be built. However, grid expansion is
itself very costly to consumers, and in any case takes time. In the short
and the medium run, the Westminster government should act to limit
constraint payment prices.
Helen McDade
Renewable Energy Foundation
Well done to George Herraghty for exposing the absurdity of over relying on
weather dependent wind energy With operators raking in subsidies and also
the constraints to not generate you have to wonder what buffoon thought it
was a good idea to flood the grid with unstable and volatile wind energy
and charge the already financially burdened consumer for the resulting
difficulty in managing it.
Cue energy ministers from Westminster starting with Labour’s Hapless Ed
Milliband who dreamed up the catastrophic ‘Connect and Manage’ system after
pressure from the wind industry, outraged because the National Grid was
quite reasonably refusing to connect their turbines to the grid until it
could cope with the energy produced. The following coalition government
implemented the scheme without understanding the appallingly consequences
of it.
Non engineering savvy policy makers allowed industrial wind development to
rampage almost unabated across our country. Once planning is granted a
bizarre promise of connection to the grid is made, no matter how many miles
it may be, how much damage is done to the environment or whether the
infrastructure can actually cope. Following Milliband’s ‘cunning windy
plan’ energy ministers in Westminster and Holyrood continued with the
buffoonery.
We continue to watch in horror as our landscapes are concreted over, CO2
absorbing trees are hacked down, carbon holding peat lands ripped up and
our wildlife displaced or risking life and wing flying through the rotating
bird shredders. Our electricity bills continue to rise despite being told
wind is getting ‘cheaper’ which suggests this consumer backed industry is
increasing its profits and delighting its shareholders.
The wind operators are gobbling up public money faster than their turbines
are providing useable energy.
Lyndsey Ward
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