May 4, 2011
Scotland

Wind farms given cash to stop producing energy

Carrick Gazette, www.carricktoday.co.uk 4 May 2011

The Scottish Government has spent up to £300,000 to six Scottish wind farms to stop producing energy, including Hadyard Hill in Carrick, which was given £140,000 to stop producing energy.

Hadyard Hill in South Ayrshire, which is owned by SSE Renewables, was one of Britain’s most powerful wind farms when commissioned in March 2006.

On April 5th and 6th this year the National Grid explained that an overload due to high winds and heavy rain throughout the night meant that more wind energy was produced than they could store.

Hadyard Hill was given £140,000 to stop producing energy.

Lee Mooney, planning director for the Renewable Energy Foundation (REF), which researched the payments, said: “Throwing the energy away, and paying wind farms to do so is not only costly but obviously very wasteful. Government must rethink the scale and pace of wind power development before the cost of managing it becomes intolerable and the scale of the waste scandalous.”

National Grid spokesman Stewart Larque said: “One of our key roles is to balance supply and demand. On the night of the 5th and 6th the wind was high, it was raining heavily, this also produced more hydro energy than normal.

“Turbines, at a variety of sites over Scotland, were stopped as the grid network could not store all of the energy they were producing.

A Scottish government spokesman pointed out that the electricity generated by renewables accounted for 27.4% of Scotland’s electricity use.

He said: “Generators will sometimes be required to reduce output.”

URL to article:  https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2011/05/04/wind-farms-given-cash-to-stop-producing-energy/