FIVE-HUNDRED and seven million pounds. That’s how much was added onto British energy bills in 2021 alone because of fees the National Grid has to pay wind farms to shut down.
That money – an increase on the £299m which was spent in 2020 for the same reason – was “utterly wasted”, SNP MP Philippa Whitford told the Sunday National, because there is not the capacity to send the renewable power generated in Scotland to where it is needed.
The £806m in “curtailment costs” – 82% of which was paid to wind farms north of the Border – arose because the National Grid has not been upgraded sufficiently to handle the renewable power that Scotland can generate.
But there is an alternative.
Excess power generated during times of high wind could instead be put into batteries for later use, or other renewable energy technologies that serve a similar storage function, such as pumped-hydro or green hydrogen.
“At the moment we’re not investing in any of these things that Scotland has immense potential in, and yet we’re paying wind farms to shut off. It just doesn’t make sense,” Whitford (below) said. “The danger is Scotland loses its opportunity.
“The Government haven’t invested in the National Grid. It hasn’t been expanded, the interconnectors that were promised to go out to the islands and also up and down the coast haven’t been built.
“What they do, when it’s going to be too much for the grid to cope with, is they pay the windfarm to turn off and they just lock the turbines.
“If you’re doing that, that is utterly wasted money.”
​
Instead of wasting – or not even generating – the excess power, it can be stored in other renewable technologies for future use.
Pumped-storage hydro works by moving water from a low elevation to a high one during times when excess power is available. When supply is lacking, that water is allowed to flow back down, turning a turbine and generating power as it moves.
Green hydrogen is another form of energy storage. It uses excess renewable electricity to split water into its constituent parts: oxygen and hydrogen. The hydrogen can then be stored for later use.
The two could form part of a wider renewable energy network, covering gaps in supply when the wind isn’t blowing or the sun isn’t shining.
And with green hydrogen, there is potential for a massive export market. Whitford, as the chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Groups for Germany, said that is something politicians from that country are acutely aware of.
“They’re interested in green hydrogen, and they know they will be based on imports,” she said. “They know they don’t have the water, nor do they have the renewable electricity to make it themselves.”
But as well as the potential for exports, Whitford argues that pumped-hydro and green hydrogen would work better for storage than batteries.
“Once you’ve built it, as long as you maintain it, that’s it,” she said. “Whereas with lithium ion batteries, you are depending on rare earth minerals and they deteriorate. You won’t get 40 or 50 years out of a battery farm, so it is a much better investment for storing energy.”
A report from BiGGAR Economics, commissioned by Scottish Renewables and published earlier in May, identified six “shovel-ready” pumped-hydro projects in Scotland – if only the UK Government steps up.
SSE, the firm behind one of those potential projects, has been running adverts in the Politico London newsletter to try and get action from the UK Government.
The adverts in the newsletter, which is widely read by those in Westminster, says: “Our £1.5bn+ Coire Glas pumped-hydro storage project could power 3m homes with clean energy, even when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining. We just need one simple policy decision. It’s time to act.”
READ MORE: Scottish hydro power projects are doomed unless Westminster makes changes
Whitford said she agreed, adding: “It’s urgent to get a system of investment that rewards companies, individuals, bonds, or whatever to actually invest in building these critical pieces of national infrastructure – which the government should also be looking at putting money into.”
She went on: “The UK Government’s not invested enough in energy infrastructure or this, which is energy security. That’s what I don’t understand. If you don’t start now then the dates about when they’re expected to come onstream [between 2027 and 2034] just won’t be happening.”
But rapid movement from the Tory government seems unlikely. No new pumped-storage hydro projects have been commissioned in the UK since the 1980s, with the first set up in the 1960s. But despite the proven pedigree of the technology, Tory ministers appear “ignorant” of what it is.
Speaking in the Commons earlier this week, Scotland Office Minister John Lamont referred to pumped-storage hydro as a “new technology”. While speaking at a Holyrood committee in April, Networks Minister Andrew Bowie called hydro a “nascent” one.
“If they’re that ignorant about it, then that’s part of the problem,” Whitford said. “And for that to be two Scottish MPs, Lamont and Bowie, not knowing about pumped-storage hydro is pretty ignorant.”
A UK Government spokesperson said: “The UK has blazed a trail globally for green growth, having already attracted billions for over a decade in green investment and there is huge potential still.
“Scotland has played a key role in this and has benefited hugely from this work. Our plans to power up Britain are expected to attract a further £100 billion investment and support 480,000 jobs across the UK by 2030.
“While we cannot comment on specific projects, the Government is committed to facilitating the deployment of electricity storage in the UK, including government investment in pumped-hydro storage.”
The figures quoted on wind power curtailment costs come from a report compiled by Lane Clark & Peacock and commissioned by Drax, another energy firm looking to develop a pumped-hydro storage project in Scotland.
This is why we need to start investing in large scale energy storage
Almost as if we should have built nuclear power stations in sensible locations instead of building wind turbines we can’t even use the energy from.
I’m sure there’s reasons but surely something like storing energy through Hydrogen would be best when demand is less than production?
Especially since we’re looking at Hydrogen being put into a home gas.
It’s also an alternative to battery cars.
So isn’t this just the same as having a gas power plant you only use at peak?
Not all generating capacity used all thr time!
Are there any studies on potential retrofitting gas central heating systems with domestic heating or hot water storage, and using surplus energy to heat water? Just like Economy 7, water could could be heated at any time of the day when excess energy is generated. With the use of smart meters, this could potentially be a viable solution, in my opinion.
How much energy do we use for heating water and homes?
Why not mine Bitcoin with the excess power instead of just wasting it?
There is no long term energy policy from the tory party, they allowed Centrica to close the Rough storage depot and the gas companies to demolish gasometers to save money so the UK has the lowest gas reserves in Europe.
Why am i talking about gas in a subreddit about electricity? About half our electricity comes from gas powered power stations.
Energy storage will be needed to store the excess. Don’t forget that doesn’t just mean batteries there’s many different ways to do it.
There’s island communities in Scotland that uses excess wind energy converted to hydrogen. The fuel cells are then used to make electricity when wind dies down and there is an increase in demand. It’s used for electricity and heating, along with running vehicles retrofitted for hydrogen.
Orkney have been doing this for awhile. The conversion isn’t very efficient but if the excess energy isn’t going to be used anyway then it shouldn’t matter.
So you seem to know a bit about this: Whatever remedy we apply to this problem (storage, interconnectors or both), are the periods of excess wind and solar enough to cover the periods of dunkelflaute throughout the year? (Assuming we try to get as close to 100percent renewable generation as we can).
Genuine question not sealioning
*Every week* they are unloading new turbines, enormous road-closing loads on huge trucks. Where the fuck are they going then? Like, they’re still coming in…
Source: im in Scotland near the harbour they ship these things into and they pass my window at midnight – and make a fucking racket throwing their temporary cones n shit about. *Quite a spectacle tbh*.
I CANNOT wait for Scotland to leave this fucking union! Scotland has the renewable energy potential to generate enough energy for 100% of Scotlands energy needs the n perpetuity (meaning we could all have free energy) BUT ALSO 1/3 of the entire continent of Europe’s energy demands for perpetuity too.
But Westminster wants to keep subsidizing the oil and gas industry for their mates, so instead we pay swollen rates to foreign interests for access to our own energy.
I fucking hate this fucking union.
I still like the idea of flywheel storage. Having a couple of medium sized units located next to each wind turbine.
There’s a few planning applications across Scotland for battery storage sites at the moment. Unfortunately despite the vast majority of people realising that we need these yesterday, the local community where they’re planned to be sited are very much of the opinion that they don’t want them near them.
The ones that spring to mind are sites near rural communities.
IMO the planning regulations and process around these types of applications need streamlined.
This is such an ignorant article to be honest…
The reason wind energy providers get paid to shut down is because of contractual guarantees to the generation owners to buy power from these wind turbines when they can generate, so yes, when they CAN generate energy, but the grid can’t use it – the owners still need to be paid.
It’s all part of the contractual power purchase agreements when these windfarm’s are first set up, and all accounted for in the cost of the electricity.
This whole conversation is framing it wrong to be honest. It’s not wasted money at all. Paying curtailment fees is standard practice across the industry because without it load balancing would become a logistical nightmare, all suppliers would fight and argue to remain online as no one would ever want to be chosen to turn off and make a loss.
Think of it this way, you have 10,000 wind turbines, but current load only needs 7000 of them online – is it fair that the 3000 unneeded ones earn no income? Who gets to choose the 3000? So the only choice is to pay them regardless as if they were generating the energy they could be generating at the time. Also you cannot run all 10,000 at 70% – that’s not how they work.
Fact of the matter even with the above curtailment costs – it’s still VASTLY cheaper turning wind farms on and off than traditional generation methods. It’s a flick of a switch which applies a brake.
Gas plants get paid also by the way, they still have workers to pay, and overheads and when the grid asks them to wind down, they still get paid for that, it’s all negotiated up front and baked into the prices.
Yes massive investments need to be made into storage, but framing the cost of load balancing as “wasted money” is just ignorant of how energy supply works (which is why they only spoke to a politician, because they almost always know fuck all).
Oh and the reason no pumped hydro gets approved is simple.
It’s expensive, takes a fuck load of concrete, and every time a project gets started NIMBYs fight it tooth and nail, because pumped hydro at any scale worth doing basically involves walling off valleys and creating artificial lakes (at 2 different elevations).
Though one of the better ideas kicking around right now is to use old coal mines as storage facilities – only issue will be making them water tight, but still probably cheapen building huge artificial concrete lakes.
The issue with connecting more BESS to store excess renewable generation is the fact that National Grid are limiting connections to the transmission network (either directly, or indirectly at distribution level) until the mid 2030s in some cases, due to the fact that they need to upgrade vast parts of it.
Lead times on equipment is lengthy – 2-3+ years(!) for SGTs, for example. Even for cabling it’s proving to be substantial. That doesn’t excuse the ~2030 projected connection dates right enough, Ofgem and National Grid need to get the finger out to try and sort out the connection queuing system.
Not sure how it is in the SPT/SHET transmission areas as I work in England, but I imagine it’s similar.
There’s a fuck tonne just about to come online where I live (Shetland), so this seems odd.
I hate to say this because I know it will be contentious but…
The main problem here is the lack of joined up thinking and that is caused by the privatized system we now have.
If the grid and generators were a single entity and the generators were not beholden to shareholders , and if the government had coordinated the whole ,we might have had a chance of this not being a total cock up.
Currently the national grid is actually limiting connections and we have green generation worth millions unable to even get a connection.
We are years behind where we should be and the profit motive has scuppered any chance of this being resolved soon. The bizarre system that was put in place to crate a artificial “market ” for electricity has come along to bite us just like the water and gas privatizations.
Or we could just invest in reaching a nuclear base load of 85% and not worry about any of this storage technology that is
– in some cases unproven
– reliant on the outage of solar/wind being shorter than your storage
Just get the Scottish government to mine bitcoin when we have major surplus energy. Arguably a total complete waste, but so is not using the energy at all. Like socially responsible supercomputers that suspend when the energy is needed elsewhere but when a surplus is available, they can do complex modeling and simulations.
Insightful piece here going into it in more detail.
We should have spent the last 40 years building a considerable number of state owned nuclear power stations. Had we done that bills would be low forever and it would have been much better for the environment rather than this false hood of wind and solar power
23 comments
FIVE-HUNDRED and seven million pounds. That’s how much was added onto British energy bills in 2021 alone because of fees the National Grid has to pay wind farms to shut down.
That money – an increase on the £299m which was spent in 2020 for the same reason – was “utterly wasted”, SNP MP Philippa Whitford told the Sunday National, because there is not the capacity to send the renewable power generated in Scotland to where it is needed.
The £806m in “curtailment costs” – 82% of which was paid to wind farms north of the Border – arose because the National Grid has not been upgraded sufficiently to handle the renewable power that Scotland can generate.
But there is an alternative.
Excess power generated during times of high wind could instead be put into batteries for later use, or other renewable energy technologies that serve a similar storage function, such as pumped-hydro or green hydrogen.
“At the moment we’re not investing in any of these things that Scotland has immense potential in, and yet we’re paying wind farms to shut off. It just doesn’t make sense,” Whitford (below) said. “The danger is Scotland loses its opportunity.
“The Government haven’t invested in the National Grid. It hasn’t been expanded, the interconnectors that were promised to go out to the islands and also up and down the coast haven’t been built.
“What they do, when it’s going to be too much for the grid to cope with, is they pay the windfarm to turn off and they just lock the turbines.
“If you’re doing that, that is utterly wasted money.”
​
Instead of wasting – or not even generating – the excess power, it can be stored in other renewable technologies for future use.
Pumped-storage hydro works by moving water from a low elevation to a high one during times when excess power is available. When supply is lacking, that water is allowed to flow back down, turning a turbine and generating power as it moves.
Green hydrogen is another form of energy storage. It uses excess renewable electricity to split water into its constituent parts: oxygen and hydrogen. The hydrogen can then be stored for later use.
The two could form part of a wider renewable energy network, covering gaps in supply when the wind isn’t blowing or the sun isn’t shining.
And with green hydrogen, there is potential for a massive export market. Whitford, as the chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Groups for Germany, said that is something politicians from that country are acutely aware of.
“They’re interested in green hydrogen, and they know they will be based on imports,” she said. “They know they don’t have the water, nor do they have the renewable electricity to make it themselves.”
But as well as the potential for exports, Whitford argues that pumped-hydro and green hydrogen would work better for storage than batteries.
“Once you’ve built it, as long as you maintain it, that’s it,” she said. “Whereas with lithium ion batteries, you are depending on rare earth minerals and they deteriorate. You won’t get 40 or 50 years out of a battery farm, so it is a much better investment for storing energy.”
A report from BiGGAR Economics, commissioned by Scottish Renewables and published earlier in May, identified six “shovel-ready” pumped-hydro projects in Scotland – if only the UK Government steps up.
SSE, the firm behind one of those potential projects, has been running adverts in the Politico London newsletter to try and get action from the UK Government.
The adverts in the newsletter, which is widely read by those in Westminster, says: “Our £1.5bn+ Coire Glas pumped-hydro storage project could power 3m homes with clean energy, even when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining. We just need one simple policy decision. It’s time to act.”
READ MORE: Scottish hydro power projects are doomed unless Westminster makes changes
Whitford said she agreed, adding: “It’s urgent to get a system of investment that rewards companies, individuals, bonds, or whatever to actually invest in building these critical pieces of national infrastructure – which the government should also be looking at putting money into.”
She went on: “The UK Government’s not invested enough in energy infrastructure or this, which is energy security. That’s what I don’t understand. If you don’t start now then the dates about when they’re expected to come onstream [between 2027 and 2034] just won’t be happening.”
But rapid movement from the Tory government seems unlikely. No new pumped-storage hydro projects have been commissioned in the UK since the 1980s, with the first set up in the 1960s. But despite the proven pedigree of the technology, Tory ministers appear “ignorant” of what it is.
Speaking in the Commons earlier this week, Scotland Office Minister John Lamont referred to pumped-storage hydro as a “new technology”. While speaking at a Holyrood committee in April, Networks Minister Andrew Bowie called hydro a “nascent” one.
“If they’re that ignorant about it, then that’s part of the problem,” Whitford said. “And for that to be two Scottish MPs, Lamont and Bowie, not knowing about pumped-storage hydro is pretty ignorant.”
A UK Government spokesperson said: “The UK has blazed a trail globally for green growth, having already attracted billions for over a decade in green investment and there is huge potential still.
“Scotland has played a key role in this and has benefited hugely from this work. Our plans to power up Britain are expected to attract a further £100 billion investment and support 480,000 jobs across the UK by 2030.
“While we cannot comment on specific projects, the Government is committed to facilitating the deployment of electricity storage in the UK, including government investment in pumped-hydro storage.”
The figures quoted on wind power curtailment costs come from a report compiled by Lane Clark & Peacock and commissioned by Drax, another energy firm looking to develop a pumped-hydro storage project in Scotland.
This is why we need to start investing in large scale energy storage
Almost as if we should have built nuclear power stations in sensible locations instead of building wind turbines we can’t even use the energy from.
I’m sure there’s reasons but surely something like storing energy through Hydrogen would be best when demand is less than production?
Especially since we’re looking at Hydrogen being put into a home gas.
It’s also an alternative to battery cars.
So isn’t this just the same as having a gas power plant you only use at peak?
Not all generating capacity used all thr time!
Are there any studies on potential retrofitting gas central heating systems with domestic heating or hot water storage, and using surplus energy to heat water? Just like Economy 7, water could could be heated at any time of the day when excess energy is generated. With the use of smart meters, this could potentially be a viable solution, in my opinion.
How much energy do we use for heating water and homes?
Why not mine Bitcoin with the excess power instead of just wasting it?
There is no long term energy policy from the tory party, they allowed Centrica to close the Rough storage depot and the gas companies to demolish gasometers to save money so the UK has the lowest gas reserves in Europe.
Why am i talking about gas in a subreddit about electricity? About half our electricity comes from gas powered power stations.
Energy storage will be needed to store the excess. Don’t forget that doesn’t just mean batteries there’s many different ways to do it.
There’s island communities in Scotland that uses excess wind energy converted to hydrogen. The fuel cells are then used to make electricity when wind dies down and there is an increase in demand. It’s used for electricity and heating, along with running vehicles retrofitted for hydrogen.
Orkney have been doing this for awhile. The conversion isn’t very efficient but if the excess energy isn’t going to be used anyway then it shouldn’t matter.
So you seem to know a bit about this: Whatever remedy we apply to this problem (storage, interconnectors or both), are the periods of excess wind and solar enough to cover the periods of dunkelflaute throughout the year? (Assuming we try to get as close to 100percent renewable generation as we can).
Genuine question not sealioning
*Every week* they are unloading new turbines, enormous road-closing loads on huge trucks. Where the fuck are they going then? Like, they’re still coming in…
Source: im in Scotland near the harbour they ship these things into and they pass my window at midnight – and make a fucking racket throwing their temporary cones n shit about. *Quite a spectacle tbh*.
I CANNOT wait for Scotland to leave this fucking union! Scotland has the renewable energy potential to generate enough energy for 100% of Scotlands energy needs the n perpetuity (meaning we could all have free energy) BUT ALSO 1/3 of the entire continent of Europe’s energy demands for perpetuity too.
But Westminster wants to keep subsidizing the oil and gas industry for their mates, so instead we pay swollen rates to foreign interests for access to our own energy.
I fucking hate this fucking union.
I still like the idea of flywheel storage. Having a couple of medium sized units located next to each wind turbine.
There’s a few planning applications across Scotland for battery storage sites at the moment. Unfortunately despite the vast majority of people realising that we need these yesterday, the local community where they’re planned to be sited are very much of the opinion that they don’t want them near them.
The ones that spring to mind are sites near rural communities.
IMO the planning regulations and process around these types of applications need streamlined.
This is such an ignorant article to be honest…
The reason wind energy providers get paid to shut down is because of contractual guarantees to the generation owners to buy power from these wind turbines when they can generate, so yes, when they CAN generate energy, but the grid can’t use it – the owners still need to be paid.
It’s all part of the contractual power purchase agreements when these windfarm’s are first set up, and all accounted for in the cost of the electricity.
This whole conversation is framing it wrong to be honest. It’s not wasted money at all. Paying curtailment fees is standard practice across the industry because without it load balancing would become a logistical nightmare, all suppliers would fight and argue to remain online as no one would ever want to be chosen to turn off and make a loss.
Think of it this way, you have 10,000 wind turbines, but current load only needs 7000 of them online – is it fair that the 3000 unneeded ones earn no income? Who gets to choose the 3000? So the only choice is to pay them regardless as if they were generating the energy they could be generating at the time. Also you cannot run all 10,000 at 70% – that’s not how they work.
Fact of the matter even with the above curtailment costs – it’s still VASTLY cheaper turning wind farms on and off than traditional generation methods. It’s a flick of a switch which applies a brake.
Gas plants get paid also by the way, they still have workers to pay, and overheads and when the grid asks them to wind down, they still get paid for that, it’s all negotiated up front and baked into the prices.
Yes massive investments need to be made into storage, but framing the cost of load balancing as “wasted money” is just ignorant of how energy supply works (which is why they only spoke to a politician, because they almost always know fuck all).
Oh and the reason no pumped hydro gets approved is simple.
It’s expensive, takes a fuck load of concrete, and every time a project gets started NIMBYs fight it tooth and nail, because pumped hydro at any scale worth doing basically involves walling off valleys and creating artificial lakes (at 2 different elevations).
Though one of the better ideas kicking around right now is to use old coal mines as storage facilities – only issue will be making them water tight, but still probably cheapen building huge artificial concrete lakes.
The issue with connecting more BESS to store excess renewable generation is the fact that National Grid are limiting connections to the transmission network (either directly, or indirectly at distribution level) until the mid 2030s in some cases, due to the fact that they need to upgrade vast parts of it.
Lead times on equipment is lengthy – 2-3+ years(!) for SGTs, for example. Even for cabling it’s proving to be substantial. That doesn’t excuse the ~2030 projected connection dates right enough, Ofgem and National Grid need to get the finger out to try and sort out the connection queuing system.
Not sure how it is in the SPT/SHET transmission areas as I work in England, but I imagine it’s similar.
There’s a fuck tonne just about to come online where I live (Shetland), so this seems odd.
I hate to say this because I know it will be contentious but…
The main problem here is the lack of joined up thinking and that is caused by the privatized system we now have.
If the grid and generators were a single entity and the generators were not beholden to shareholders , and if the government had coordinated the whole ,we might have had a chance of this not being a total cock up.
Currently the national grid is actually limiting connections and we have green generation worth millions unable to even get a connection.
We are years behind where we should be and the profit motive has scuppered any chance of this being resolved soon. The bizarre system that was put in place to crate a artificial “market ” for electricity has come along to bite us just like the water and gas privatizations.
Or we could just invest in reaching a nuclear base load of 85% and not worry about any of this storage technology that is
– in some cases unproven
– reliant on the outage of solar/wind being shorter than your storage
Just get the Scottish government to mine bitcoin when we have major surplus energy. Arguably a total complete waste, but so is not using the energy at all. Like socially responsible supercomputers that suspend when the energy is needed elsewhere but when a surplus is available, they can do complex modeling and simulations.
https://archy.deberker.com/the-uk-is-wasting-a-lot-of-wind-power/
Insightful piece here going into it in more detail.
We should have spent the last 40 years building a considerable number of state owned nuclear power stations. Had we done that bills would be low forever and it would have been much better for the environment rather than this false hood of wind and solar power