Wind farm paid £1.2 million to produce no electricity

source

A wind farm has been paid £1.2 million not to produce electricity for eight-and-a-half hours. The amount is ten times greater than the wind farm's owners would have received had they actually generated any electricity. The disclosure exposes the bizarre workings of Britain's electricity supply, prompting calls last night for an official investigation into the payments system. The £1.2 million will go to a Norwegian company which owns 60 turbines in the Scottish Borders.

I just read this and don't really know what to say about it other than it seems incredible.

We are busy burning coal and oil as well as using nuclear power to make electricty and when we have too much what do we do. We shut down the free source and pay rediculous amounts for the privilage.

Please sombody pinch me I must be dreaming.

reply to post by bigyin


Why would this surprise anyone. It is simply more corruption to cronie friends with tax money out of the citizens pockets while keeping the price of electricity up more money for their cronies pockets. They get you coming and going. Nothing will change until people finally get sick and tired of being sick and tired.

The rest of the story says they had to shut down because of incoming high winds ,remnants of Hurricane Katia.
As for paying them to do so,well its probably somethi ng to do with compensation .It takes a lot of effort ,manpower and paperwork to turn a switch

And so it continues with the Queens Archimedes screw.

The Queen has spent £1.8 million pounds on an Archimedes Screw, the amount of energy it is estimated it will produce is 1.7 million kilowatt hours per year – gives an average output of 200,000 watts. This means that Her Majesty's new toy will be producing no more than enough to power 2,000 x 100 watt lightbulbs.

It all has to do with "feed-in" tariffs. The feed in tariff for hydrolectric on 200kw amounts to 12.5 p per kwh, totalling £212,500 a year.

To get this, the Queen doesn’t actually have to feed any energy into the grid. She is ‘deemed to export’ all the electricity she generates, getting the full subsidy automatically, based on the capacity of her screw, even if she uses a lot of the electricity herself. She thus gets free electricity, instead of what she currently has to buy from the grid, plus a gift of £212,500 a year in subsidy, regardless of how much she actually feeds into the grid.

Welcome to the green world.

blogs.telegraph.co.uk...

I wil try to forget this story when the energy prices rise late autum time.
So the 'whole sale prices' are rising and the cost has to be passed on to the end user.

No wonder our economy cannot regulate properly anymore if inflation keeps rising just on the basis of energy price rises.
Were screwed

The back end of Hurricane Katia is the problem, high winds are problematic to wind farms so they have to be turned off to avoid danger.

Although i don't see where compensation should come into it... If the milkman cant deliver his milk on a winter morning because of extreme weather, he doesn't get a 10x reimbursement from the government?!

reply to post by ThorsBrother


But the milkman is not green so no subsidy.

I am deemed to have a hydro electric station producing 1 Mw ('cos I say so) so can I have a subsidy of 12.5 per kwh to be deemed to feed my deemed hydroelectric station into the grid?

This is just such nonsense. How can anyone in their right minds pay a subsidy to a wind farm not to produce when it cannot produce anyway and what is more if it could produce it would also get a subsidy. This complete lunacy has to stop. I have no problem with wind competing in the market, but it is not because if cannot. Without subsidies wind power is not a viable option.

I think when wind farms cannot produce either because of high winds or low winds or the weather is too cold then they should pay a penalty to help fund the conventional stations that have to keep running.

When they are running they get the priority and the highest prices in the market - not that conventional power is complaining as they also enjoy the wind prices if the wind is making the market price.

Right at this moment wind generation in the UK is high at around 1/3rd of it's capacity and is generating 3.8% of the supply in the last half hour.

www.bmreports.com...

Scroll down until you get to the wind parts or untick everything else on the left hand side.