“Brits Pay Billions To Waste Wind Energy” By Irina Slav

“Curtailment is curse of wind and solar businesses. Curtailment is euphemism for waste because this is exactly what these businesses are forced to do when there is too much generation and not economic

Wind power is the leading technology of the energy transition in the UK. It is the basis for the transition shift championed by the Starmer government—and it is failing because the grid operator is having to pay hundreds of millions to wind turbine operators to turn them off. The reason: there is no way to transport the electricity to where it can be consumed.

The UK is not a country known for its many days of sunshine. What it is known for is the fact it is an island, and islands are windy places. Wind power was supposed to be perfect for the UK. It was the main tool that would, according to the new government, turn it into a global leader in the energy transition. Instead, it has cost Britons 1.3 billion to compensate wind turbine operators for lost profits—this year alone.

Curtailment is the curse of wind and solar businesses. Curtailment is a euphemism for waste because this is exactly what these businesses are forced to do when there is too much generation and not enough demand. Wind turbines get turned off, and operators lose money they would have otherwise made—and get paid by the government for their troubles.

For these operators, the compensation is a good thing. It keeps them going instead of sinking under the weight of wind power intermittency and inflexibility with regard to demand. For taxpayers, however, the situation is quite far from ideal. They get expensive—instead of cheap—energy despite the Starmer government’s promise of the former.

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According to the industry and the grid operator, the solution to the curtailment problem is simple enough. All they need to do is build more transmission lines. Unfortunately, this costs money as well, and it’s not a few pounds. The cure, in other words, is about as expensive as the disease.

“The outdated rules of our energy system mean vast amounts of cheap green power go to waste,” Clem Cowton, Octopus Energy's director of external affairs, told Bloomberg. “It’s absurd that Britain pays Scottish wind farms to turn off when it’s windy, while simultaneously paying gas-power stations in the south to turn on.”

Indeed, the situation is quite absurd. However, it is not because the rules of the energy system have changed. At the most basic level, these rules are hard and fast: supply should be available upon demand in sufficient volumes as to be relatively affordable for the majority. The fast pace of the energy transition in the UK, however, has led to what increasingly looks like excess wind power capacity, whose output the grid cannot handle.

The argument of companies such as Octopus Energy is that a new kind of grid is needed to ensure that all wind power gets consumed and theoretically, it is a good argument. Practically, as noted, it is a very expensive one. According to the new state-owned grid operator, the National Energy System Operator, grid expansion is going to cost some 40 billion pounds annually if the UK is to hit the Starmer government net-zero goals for 2030.

This is because the amount of new transmission lines that would need to be built is “more than double over five years what has been built in total in the last ten,” according to NESO, as quoted by Proactive Investors.

This sort of undertaking would take years, and during that time, electricity is not going to get cheaper for the British. On the contrary, it is going to get even more expensive because the government recently approved new interconnectors with Europe in order to secure supply during windless periods. With the electricity supply tight as it is in most of Europe, chances are these imports will not be cut-price, adding to electricity bills in addition to what the industry calls “congestion costs” or curtailment compensation.