{"id":686320,"date":"2026-01-10T08:10:22","date_gmt":"2026-01-10T08:10:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/686320\/"},"modified":"2026-01-10T08:10:22","modified_gmt":"2026-01-10T08:10:22","slug":"how-wasted-wind-is-pushing-up-electricity-bills-in-the-uk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/686320\/","title":{"rendered":"How wasted wind is pushing up electricity bills in the UK"},"content":{"rendered":"

Three years ago the Seagreen wind farm off the eastern coast of Scotland was opened to quite some fanfare.<\/p>\n

The development was Scotland\u2019s largest, producing enough electricity from its 114 turbines to power 1.6 million British homes, and, ministers were quick to point out, was \u201cproof\u201d of Britain\u2019s status as a green energy superpower.<\/p>\n

SSE<\/a>, the company behind the project, said it would \u201cdeliver on the UK\u2019s net-zero ambitions to provide cheaper, cleaner and more secure energy around the country\u201d.<\/p>\n

Yet three years on Seagreen has turned into something of a green elephant.<\/p>\n

Over three quarters of the power it was intended to generate was squandered in the year to March 2025 because Britain\u2019s electricity grid couldn\u2019t handle it. Instead the wind farm owner was paid tens of millions of pounds for it to stand idle.<\/p>\n

This trend has continued<\/a>: for the entirety of 2025, Seagreen was paid to switch off for 63 per cent of the time it was due to generate.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s not just Seagreen. Viking, one of Britain\u2019s biggest onshore wind farms, built by SSE on Shetland, was paid to switch off for 65 per cent of the time it should have been generating, according to data from GB Renewables Map.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

Viking wind farm on Shetland<\/p>\n

SSE\/PA<\/p>\n

Across Scotland, wind farms were paid not to produce 37 per cent of their planned output during the first half of last year, as the electricity could not be used locally or moved to where it was needed.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Shetland\u2019s politicians \u2018could stand in way of green prosperity\u2019<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

And it was expensive. In all, consumers spent \u00a31.5 billion last year paying for wind farms to switch off when they planned to generate and paying for other plants to replace them. This wasted wind is expected to grow over the next four years as more windfarms come on line.<\/p>\n

The fundamental problem, in layman\u2019s terms, is a lack of cables.<\/p>\n

Wind farms, often built offshore or in remote parts of Scotland, sell the electricity they generate on Britain\u2019s national market.<\/p>\n

But there are cabling bottlenecks that prevent the energy from getting to where it needs to go: one across the middle of Scotland, and one along the border between Scotland and England. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere is more power being generated up in Scotland than Neso [the National Energy System Operator] can flow down into England, and Scotland can\u2019t use it all,\u201d says Tom Edwards, principal modeller at Cornwall Insight, the energy consultancy.<\/p>\n

\"People<\/p>\n

Another Scottish wind farm in Aberdeen Bay<\/p>\n

ALAMY<\/p>\n

A spokesman for the energy company SSE said: \u201cThe UK has built renewables where the resources are strongest, and now we need to upgrade the grid to eliminate bottlenecks so we can harness more of that energy, more of the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

When there is too much electricity being generated for the grid to cope Neso, the government-owned body responsible for keeping Britain\u2019s lights on, intervenes.<\/p>\n

It has to keep supply and demand across the network balanced in real-time to avoid blackouts and as a result pays wind farms to switch off while at the same time paying for power plants nearer to consumers to fire up and replace them.<\/p>\n

But how did Britain arrive in this bizarre position of building wind farms without the required cabling?<\/p>\n

The situation stems from a policy called \u201cconnect and manage\u201d, introduced by Ofgem in 2009 and confirmed by the government in 2010.<\/p>\n

It was designed to encourage investment in wind farms to help Britain hit its 2020 renewable energy targets by assuring investors they would be able to sell their power as expected, even if the required grid upgrades \u2014 for which they weren\u2019t responsible \u2014 were delayed.<\/p>\n

If the wind farms were curtailed because of grid bottlenecks, they would still receive the money they had made selling the planned generation, plus \u201cconstraint payments\u201d \u2014 compensation for any extra costs or missed revenues like subsidy payments.<\/p>\n

The theory was that wind farm investors would otherwise require much higher prices to make their projects viable, to insulate them against the risk of the cables not being built on time.<\/p>\n

Initially, it seemed to work and constraint payments were relatively low.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey did build the infrastructure for 2020, they just stopped paying attention around 2015,\u201d claims one industry source, who says the government, regulator and the system operator \u2014 then part of National Grid \u2014 collectively dropped the ball and stopped planning properly to ensure the network would keep up with the expansion of wind farms. There was no strategic plan for 2025 \u2014 \u201cand we\u2019re now playing catch-up\u201d.<\/p>\n

Others say that Ofgem \u2014 which regulates the energy market, setting bills and determining how much money can be spent on upgrades \u2014 was too keen to focus on keeping consumer costs low in the short term without thinking of the long-term consequences.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere hasn\u2019t been enough anticipatory investment,\u201d says Edwards. \u201cThe network companies haven\u2019t been given the money to invest ahead of need, because the regulator was too keen on lowering costs without thinking about the total picture.\u201d<\/p>\n

The result for consumers is they now face a rising bill for constraints \u2014 as well as a rising bill to belatedly fund a massive expansion of the network of new cables to try to tackle the issue.<\/p>\n

And it is going to get increasingly expensive. The concern in Whitehall is that as more wind farms come online, so-called constraint payments will continue to rise.<\/p>\n

Already constraint payments are the biggest part of the overall cost of Neso balancing the network, which stands at about \u00a32 billion a year and accounts for about \u00a344 on an annual household bill. Neso has estimated that by 2030 constraint costs will drive balancing costs up to \u00a38 billion, adding significantly to bills, before falling again in subsequent years as new cabling comes online.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone wants to see constraint payments minimised, so there\u2019s an urgent need to build new grid capacity as fast as possible,\u201d says Barnaby Wharton, head of flexibility grid at Renewable UK, the wind industry body. \u201cMajor new undersea cables are being laid including the powerful high-voltage Eastern Green Links connecting Scotland and England, which will go live from 2029 onwards.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last month Ofgem approved plans for a \u00a370 billion spending programme<\/a> to fund such upgrades to the transmission network over the next five years, which will in itself add about \u00a360 to annual bills by 2030. It says this should negate about \u00a355 per household of Neso\u2019s forecast increased constraints and mean that by 2031 constraints are only about \u00a310 per household higher than today.<\/p>\n

But in the meantime, the unedifying spectacle of paying huge sums for wind farms to stand idle is set to continue \u2014 with a raft of big new offshore wind farms due to be given the go-ahead by the government next week as it scrambles to try to hit its 2030 decarbonisation target.<\/p>\n

The biggest looming bottleneck is in East Anglia, where there isn\u2019t enough transmission capacity between the grid in Norfolk and Suffolk and the rest of the country. This area accounts for about \u00a34 billion of the forecast spike in constraint costs in 2030.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s going to be the German and the Danish interconnectors and then lots of offshore wind farms in Norfolk,\u201d says Edwards. There are also nuclear plants: \u201cYou\u2019ve got Sizewell B in Suffolk, and then Sizewell C would also add to that [in the 2030s], which means that there\u2019s going to be a lot of power in Norfolk, and not the capacity to flow it out.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Construction<\/p>\n

The site of the Sizewell C nuclear power plant, next to the existing Sizewell B, in Suffolk<\/p>\n

CHRIS RADBURN\/REUTERS<\/p>\n

Neso has said that these costs can only be avoided if National Grid can deliver two big controversial cabling projects ahead of time to reinforce the network around East Anglia: SeaLink, offshore between Suffolk and Kent and Norwich to Tilbury, a 114-mile line involving 50-metre high pylons through Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex.<\/p>\n

Few in the industry believe this is achievable, and expect constraints will only start coming down once they are completed, which is due in 2031.<\/p>\n

Central planning will be key to getting the situation under control in the longer-term. Neso is drawing up a \u201cstrategic spatial energy plan\u201d for the government that would help select where wind farms are built, factoring in networks.<\/p>\n

A spokesman for Neso said: \u201cWe are determined to play our part in keeping the costs of balancing the electricity system as low as possible, and our development of new tools, reforms and close collaboration with industry, has already saved consumers at least \u00a31.2 billion.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut the delivery of new electricity network transmission infrastructure and future electricity market arrangements will be vital to lowering these costs for consumers in the long term.\u201d<\/p>\n

In other words: The green elephants will be around for quite some time yet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Three years ago the Seagreen wind farm off the eastern coast of Scotland was opened to quite some…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":686321,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[51,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-686320","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-uk","10":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115869792863746390","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/686320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=686320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/686320\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/686321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=686320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=686320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=686320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}