Energy customers paid £173m last year to turn wind turbines off 

Wind farm
Wind farms are being asked not to supply electricity Credit: Simon Belcher/Alamy

Energy customers were charged £173m to stop wind farms from supplying too much power in the 12 months to April and the figure could grow “exponentially”, experts have warned.

Known as “constraint payments”, these charges currently add around £6 to the bill of every household in Britain.

This payment makes up a large percentage of the Balancing Use of System (BSoUS) section you can find on your electricity bill.

They are made by National Grid to incentivise wind farms to take back energy when more energy is generated than can be stored, usually as a result of higher wind speeds.

This problem has increased rapidly in recent years as more of Britain’s power has come from renewable sources. A decade ago customers paid nothing in constraint payments. 

Half of the payment is paid by the electricity generator, with the other half paid by the energy suppliers and ultimately the households.

Energy generators subsequently raise the price, however, meaning the full amount is effectively passed on to customers.

Many of the payments are made to wind farms in Scotland, owned by the likes of Scottish Power and SSE, although there are many.

Tom Edwards, of energy consultant Cornwall Insight, said "The issue is with the network, and in particular getting the electricity from where it is generated, to where it is needed.

“National Grid has plans to improve the network between Scotland and England but it will cost a lot of money and take time to build those links,” he said.

 

A National Grid spokesman said constraint payments were “the most economical way to run the system, significantly cheaper than the cost of building more infrastructure”.

Ben Guest, a specialist in renewable energy companies at Gresham House, the fund group, warned that the bill to customers could exceed £1bn as more wind farms were built.

He said one solution would be to provide batteries, which could store the excess electricity until the network could handle its transfer.

National Grid is not allowed to own batteries because of regulatory constraints, so the burden falls on the Government. Mr Guest questioned whether it was doing enough. “They are crossing their fingers and hoping batteries show up [from the private sector],” he said.

A spokesman for the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy said: “Our renewable energy market is thriving – and we are investing heavily in battery technology to improve electricity storage, including through the £274m Faraday Battery Challenge and a £20m fund to develop large-scale alternatives to conventional storage.”

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