Scottish bill payers forked out more than £3m to switch off wind turbines in the country during the killer Storm Franklin in February.
Figures from the Renewable Energy Foundation showed that 35 wind farms in Scotland were switched off on February 20 when Storm Franklin caused weather chaos.
It was the third named storm to hit the UK in a week, following on from Dudley and Eunice, with a total of four people dying due to weather-related incidents.
Wind farm companies are paid constraint payments when the weather gets too windy and the National Grid cannot handle the power being generated.
In total, they were paid £4,652,623 over the course of the three storms to switch off their turbines.
The highest total came on February 20, the day when Storm Franklin brought more than 100mph winds to the UK, with £3,498,244 being handed out to wind farm developers.
Storm Eunice on February 18 brought the lowest amount of constraint payments, with only £50,101 being forked out by bill payers.
During Storm Dudley on February 16 and 17, £1,104,278 was handed out to wind farm developers.
Constraint payments come out from Scottish bill payers energy bills, with money added on to help pay the wind farm businesses.
In total, Scots were left with a bill of £107m in 2021 due to constraint payments, lower than 2020’s massive sum of £243m.
This is due to wind output from turbines last year being considerably lower that previous years, a fact which is contributing to the current energy bills crisis, according to the Renewable Energy Foundation.
A spokesman for the group added: “The reduction in output in 2021 is a substantial contributor to the current energy bills crisis, having caused the electricity system to draw heavily from gas fired generation at precisely the moment that many other systems in Europe were experiencing the same problems.
“This has combined with high international demand, particularly in Asia (which is reducing greenhouse gas emissions and local air pollution by switching from coal to gas) to drive particularly high prices of natural gas in the European region.
“This effect may have come as a surprise to many renewables supporters, who expected that large wind fleets would buffer the United Kingdom against high gas prices.
“In fact, as is well-known to experienced analysts and has been long-predicted, a heavily renewables-based system becomes critically dependent on natural gas generation across all timescales, from seconds to years, in order to guarantee security of supply.
“The volume of gas consumed may fall, but, paradoxically, the exposure to gas and its price increases.
“The addition of more wind power will do little or nothing to mitigate this effect, and will all but certainly intensify the problem.
“The reduction in constraint volumes brings into sharp focus the low marginal benefit of adding further wind capacity in Scotland.
“A reduction in wind power output, such as that in 2020, reduces constraint payments.”
They added: “Therefore, conversely, any new proposal for wind power in Scotland, which increases potential output, must be expected to increase constraints.
“Additional capacity therefore has a high probability of some part of its own output being constrained off, reducing the global environmental benefits it can claim to offset local environmental harms.
“This matter should obviously be given close scrutiny in the planning balance by decision makers. However, and as far as we are aware, the Scottish Government has not issued formal advice requiring Reporters to take the matter into account.
“The constraints problem will persist until there is more than sufficient interconnection between Scotland and the centres of demand in England.
“Given the Scottish Government’s plans for wind, particularly offshore, it is not clear that the required level of interconnection is either feasible or economically viable.
“Constraints are therefore likely to persist for the foreseeable future, with wind capacity constantly outrunning the network’s ability to transport it to consumers at reasonable cost.”
In response, a National Grid Electricity System Operator (ESO) spokesperson said: “As Britain’s electricity system operator, we operate the system in the most cost effective way for the consumer, keeping capital costs as low as possible.
“We make constraint payments when it is more economical to temporarily reduce wind output than build expensive new infrastructure.
“We constantly analyse constraint costs versus the cost of building new assets, and are working with industry to reduce the impact of network constraints whilst building a greener system.”
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