June 29, 2021
U.K.

New wind farms threaten £2.5bn ‘constraints’ bill for consumers

Emily Gosden, Energy Editor | The Times | Tuesday June 29 2021 | www.thetimes.co.uk

Consumers face paying up to £2.5 billion a year to switch off new wind farms and other power plants because transmission cables will not be built quickly enough to carry the electricity they generate.

National Grid’s control room, which is responsible for keeping the lights on, pays power plant owners to “constrain” output when the network does not have enough capacity to transmit their electricity to where it is needed. It also pays for power plants elsewhere in the network to fire up and replace the generation that has been constrained.

These “constraint costs” amount to about £500 million a year, but new estimates from National Grid’s Electricity System Operator forecast that they will at least double and could increase five-fold to £2.5 billion within

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URL to article:  https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2021/06/29/new-wind-farms-threaten-2-5bn-constraints-bill-for-consumers/