UK Renewable Energy Firms are Being Paid Huge Sums to Not Provide Power

The U.K. electricity grid 'was built to deliver power generated by coal and gas plants near the country's major cities and towns,' reports the BBC, 'and doesn't always have sufficient capacity in the wires that carry electricity around the country to get the new renewable electricity generated way out in the wild seas and rural areas.

'And this has major consequences.'

The way the system currently works means a company like Ocean Winds gets what are effectively compensation payments if the system can't take the power its wind turbines are generating and it has to turn down its output. It means Ocean winds was paid £72,000 [nearly $100,000 USD] not to generate power from its wind farms in the Moray Firth during a half-hour period on 3 June because the system was overloaded — one of a number of occasions output was restricted that day. At the same time, 44 miles (70km) east of London, the Grain gas-fired power station on the Thames Estuary was paid £43,000 to provide more electricity.

Payments like that happen virtually every day. Seagreen, Scotland's largest wind farm, was paid £65 million last year to restrict its output 71% of the time, according to analysis by Octopus Energy. Balancing the grid in this way has already cost the country more than £500 million this year alone, the company's analysis shows. The total could reach almost £8bn a year by 2030, warns the National Electricity System Operator (NESO), the body in charge of the electricity network. It's pushing up all our energy bills and calling into question the government's promise that net zero would end up delivering cheaper electricity... the potential for renewables to deliver lower costs just isn't coming through to consumers.

Renewables now generate more than half the country's electricity, but because of the limits to how much electricity can be moved around the system, even on windy days some gas generation is almost always needed to top the system up. And because gas tends to be more expensive, it sets the wholesale price.

The UK government is now considering smaller regional markets, so wind companies 'would have to sell that spare power to local people instead of into a national market. The theory is prices would fall dramatically — on some days Scottish customers might even get their electricity for free...

'Supporters argue that it would attract energy-intensive businesses such as data centres, chemical companies and other manufacturing industries.'

Read more of this story at Slashdot.