Not REF this time. Still good to get coverage.
Millions of British households missed out on clean energy generated by strong winds in January because a crucial undersea cable stopped working.
Record levels of power created by wind farms in Scotland could not be piped to heavily populated parts of England due to faults with the Western HVDC Link, a network of underwater cables that runs down the west coast of the UK.
As a result, the farms were told to produce less energy to avoid overloading nearby areas. The National Grid must now pay them more than £30m in compensation a bill that will ultimately be footed by consumers.
Scotland is the epicentre of wind power in the UK. In 2019, it generated enough power in the first six months of the year to meet all needs north of the border twice over.
Because of this oversupply of energy, much of the electricity generated by the wind farms is transferred down to English regions via the link, which opened three years ago and was built at a cost of more than £1bn.
Construction was plagued by a series of setbacks and delays, and frequent outages since it started operating are now being investigated by industry watchdog Ofgem.
Record levels of power were generated from Scotland’s farms in January due to high winds, but the link was down throughout the month. The cause of the failure is not yet known.
All of the additional energy generated went to waste because the link was unavailable. Allowing a surge in Scotland would have overwhelmed the country’s grid, so wind farms were ordered to turn down their output.
Because of Government subsidies and agreements in place to purchase wind power, the National Grid has been forced to pay £30.9m in compensation to the wind farm operators. The amount is a record payment for its kind, analysts say.
Lee Drummee, an analyst at Cornwall Insight, said: “Ultimately those charges will get passed on the consumers at the end of the day.”
Mr Drummee said that the network will pass the cost on to suppliers, who will in turn cover it through bills paid by households and businesses.
National Grid did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
0 Comments