By Paul Homewood
h/t Philip Bratby
From the Telegraph:
The Czech billionaire buying Royal Mail and energy giant SSE are among the power plant operators being paid millions of pounds when Britain’s wind farms are switched off.
A total of £400m was spent last year on so-called curtailment, when wind turbines are told to stop generating because the grid is too congested to accept their power.
Firing up alternative plants – in many cases gas-fuelled ones – to replace this electricity elsewhere on the system also costs the taxpayer upwards of £600m.
Some wind farm companies are making tens of millions of pounds from the switch-offs, according to analysis for The Telegraph.
They include SSE, which made an estimated £138m in 2024, while Moray wind farms owner Ocean Wind made £92m, French state power company EDF took £25m and Scottish Power, which is owned by Spain’s Iberdrola, another £13m.
SSE also made an estimated £179m from providing replacement gas-fired power generation in the same year, while another £92m was made by EP UK, the energy business owned by Daniel Kretinsky, who is buying Royal Mail for £3.6bn.
German power giant Uniper also made £131m, while Vitol Group’s VPI and Intergen received £89m and £88m respectively.
Read the full story here.
This £400 million will be a drop in the ocean compared to what is coming in the next few years.
The problem at the moment is a localised one, where there is too much wind power in Scotland for the connectors to England to cope with.
In future however, if wind capacity is tripled as planned, there will be too much wind power for much of the year across the whole of the country, as on windy days it will exceed demand.
via NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
April 14, 2025 at 03:09AM
