So far in 2025, Britain has wasted £1,252,275,760 switching off wind turbines and paying gas plants to switch on.

by bottish

9 comments

  1. This was created by one of the data engineers at Octopus Energy.

  2. > #Why buy the same electricity twice?

    > When it’s really windy, we fill the grid near wind turbines with more clean energy than we need. This creates rush hour traffic on the grid, and the energy can’t get to where it’s needed.

    > As a result, we pay to make it again (often with dirty fossil fuels), as well as paying to switch the wind off.

    > #How do we fix it?

    > Improvements to the grid will help, but this is expensive and complicated too.

    > **Make energy cheaper where supply is strong. This makes better use of these abundant green electrons, and because there’d be less waste, bills could go down for everybody.**

    Emphasis mine.

    Octopus Energy have been pretty vocal proponants of Zonal Pricing for a while now.

  3. It’s not just zonal pricing, we need battery storage whether gravity, air compression or chemical systems placed throughout the grid to store the excess wind based electricity.

  4. With Zonal Pricing:

    > [Locational pricing would instead mean that local people got cheap power when it’s windy. **Scotland would have the cheapest power in Europe**, instead of among the most expensive, and every region would be cheaper than today.](https://www.theguardian.com/money/2024/oct/07/ive-fallen-out-with-people-the-bruising-debate-over-uk-zonal-energy-pricing)

    Instead we have:

    > Britain is also the second-most expensive country in the world for household electricity, with billpayers paying twice as much as those in the US.

    and

    > Britain was found to be paying the highest [industrial] electricity prices in the developed world.

    ~ [Britain paying highest electricity prices in the world as net zero costs rise](https://archive.is/szTOk)

  5. I feel like this is a bit more complex than OP and the source are presenting.

    Non-renewable fuels are fantastic at providing baseline energy capacity, but renewable fuels are often reliant on unpredictable factors (wind, solar).

    I’m very sure that all of that energy generation was “wasted”, as in not needed, but the moment that it was needed and we weren’t paying for it, we’d have rolling blackouts, something we really haven’t had since the 70s.

  6. We are a small country with a huge amount of resources.

    The fact we are stuck with some of the most expensive electricity in the entire planet is just wrong.

    It is mismanagement on an epic scale.

  7. Yup that’s capitalism. Resources only used to generate profits.

  8. And yet Facebook groups up and down the country are fighting Battery energy systems and overhead line upgrades

  9. Awful lot anti wind propaganda being spouted on this sub recently.

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