Two windfarms share £80 million to switch off
Director's column
15 Feb
Andrew Montford
The cost to consumers of so-called windfarm constraint payments is rising quickly.
Regular readers will know that I have long been concerned over the extraordinary level of payments to windfarms to switch off. These so-called ‘constraint payments’ are deemed necessary when the wires in the transmission grid have inadequate capacity to get a generator’s power to market. When that happens, the windfarm (and it is always a windfarm) is paid to switch off, and a gas-fired power station is paid to switch on so that the end user of the electricity is not left short.
This is particularly a problem for windfarms in Scottish waters, because there is relatively little transmission capacity running across the border to England, where most of the power users are found. In 2022, I noted that the offshore windfarm called Moray East had spent 25% of the previous year switched off. The suspicion is that there may be perverse incentives for developers to build windfarms in Scotland precisely so they receive constraint payments.
https://www.netzerowatch.com/all-news/two-windfarms-share-80-million-of-payments-to-switch-off
