More cash for wind farms near towns as net zero shift stretches grid

By Paul Homewood

h/t Philip Bratby

Developers are to be handed more cash to erect wind turbines and solar farms near towns and cities in a bid to get more power generation near to where it is needed.

Renewable energy companies will be allowed to charge customers more for their power if they generate it close to where it is needed, rather than in sparsely populated parts of the country.

The scheme, to be formally announced on Tuesday by Claire Coutinho, the Energy Secretary, is designed to trigger a rush to build wind and solar infrastructure on farmland around cities.

However, the policy is also likely to prove highly controversial with environment groups because of the likely impact on treasured landscapes.

The Government will introduce zonal pricing, with generators paid different rates according to the distance between their assets and consumers.

The UK will be divided into about half a dozen generating zones so that onshore wind and solar farms in the Home Counties could be paid more for their power than those in Scotland, for example.

Research by Ofgem suggests that making electricity prices higher in the South East, where demand is strongest and supply weakest, would incentivise solar developers.

They would be encouraged to buy up swathes of farmland in a region stretching from London to Bristol and up to Norwich and Cambridge for solar parks and wind farms.

Ofgem has calculated that 20 gigawatts of solar power generation is needed in southern England. Solar farms need up to 4,000 acres of land for each gigawatt, implying 60 million industrial solar panels need to be spread across an area equivalent to 40,000 football pitches.

The Campaign for the Protection of Rural England has warned that such a plan could mean many tenant farmers being thrown off their land, greater pressure on the green belt, and rural landscapes altered forever.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/03/10/wind-solar-farms-south-england-charge-more-energy/

The government claims this will reduce bills, but this is just another of the lies about Net Zero. How enabling renewable energy companies to charge customers more will cut bills is a mystery.

But more to the point, why would we want to trash the countryside by covering it with hundreds of thousands of acres of solar panels, when they produce next to nothing in winter months, the time when demand for power is at its highest?

Yesterday for instance, solar generation only ran at 7% of capacity. Today it only reached a pitiful 1.96 GW for a few minutes.