£22m is paid to turn off turbines – Express

£22 million is paid to switch off turbines -Paula Murray – Sunday Express

Scottish wind farms were paid almost £22 million for switching off their turbines during Storms Ciara and Dennis.  Renewable Energy Foundation (REF) analysis discovered the pay cheque for switching off for 13 days was £21,843,344.

The constraints payments were meant to come down and eventually end with the £1 billion Western Link Interconnector which transports Scotland’s excess energy south of the Border.  But the subsea cable running between Hunterston in Ayrshire to Deeside in North Wales tripped on January 10 meaning the National Grid was forced to ask for turbines to be halted to stop production  so landing wind farms with millions of pounds in constraint payments.

However even after it came back on on February 7 – just before Storm Ciara hit the UK – the Grid could  not deal with the amount of energy produced and asked wind farms to be switched off yet again.  The halt between February 8 and 12 netted producers close to £22 million while the first 6 weeks of the year saw some £55.7 million paid out in constraints payments.

Since the beginning of the year there have been 24 days when the payments exceeded £1 million.

Although it is the national grid that forks out the cash, the sums are added to electricity bills for consumers to deal with. Helen McDade, REF Scottish policy adviser, called the payments a “perverse incentive” adding “there is growing concern about the value for money of the Western Link subsea electricity interconnector which was supposed to address the problem of wind farms in Scotland being paid excessive constraint payments.  The interconnector has proved very unreliable, the latest outage running from the 10^th January to 7^th February.  This infrastructure and the cost of constraints arising from those failures will ultimately be paid for by electricity consumers.  However it is astonishing that even when the interconnector became operational again on the 7 February, nearly £22m was paid in constraint payments to Scottish wind farm operators over the next 13 days.  People will be astonished to find out that on windy days when we might expect full use of wind farm production, many wind developments are being paid record sums to reduce their output”.  She added a wind farm in the central highlands had received almost £17.5m million in constraints since it became operational in December 2018 and has already been paid £5.8m since the start of the year.  Yet there are two industrial wind developments planned for right next to it.

Industry body Scottish Renewables said payments were only made when National Grid fails in its contractual duty to take power from generators.

Morag Wilson, director of policy added “ Constraint payments are a normal part of the overall efficient management of our electricity system given the limitations of the UK’s ageing energy infrastructure.  National Grid pays a variety of technologies to reduce or increase output as required to help balance the system.  The compensation received by all generators is governed by the Transmission Constraint Licence Condition  which prohibits generators from obtaining an excessive benefit.  Delivering a modern electricity network capable of getting power generated to customers must be a priority over the coming years and is the best way to minimise the cost of constraint payments”

A spokeswoman for the Scottish Government said electricity production was a reserved matter adding “The Scottish Government has no role in setting constraint payments.  Constraint payments reflect that grid investment has not yet been able to fully deliver when it is needed to enable electricity generation to deliver its full potential.  It is clear that the Scottish Government must create the conditions for greater and faster grid investment to allow it to keep pace with new generation capacity and to reduce the need for constraint payments”