From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
h/t Doug Brodie/Philip Bratby
It’s started already!
From The Telegraph:
British solar farms have been paid to switch off for the first time as sunny days prompt a surge of clean power that could overwhelm the grid.
The National Energy System Operator (Neso), which manages the UK’s power grids and is overseen by Ed Miliband, the Energy Secretary, has issued switch-off orders to solar facilities this year, new research reveals.
Operators are paid to switch off when these orders are issued, with the extra cost added to consumer and business energy bills.
The solar operators claiming compensation are understood to include some of the UK’s biggest energy suppliers, such as EDF Renewables and Octopus Energy.
Such “constraint payments” are already common with wind farms because so many have been built in areas such as northern Scotland or offshore, areas without grid capacity to carry the power they generate.
So far this year, constraint payments have cost consumers £650m, according to the Wasted Wind website. The cost is added to energy bills.
Overall “balancing payments” could hit £8bn a year by 2030 without massive grid upgrades, according to Neso estimates. Such upgrades would also be extremely costly, with consumers liable.
Read the full story here.
This is of course the tip of the iceberg. The real problems will start when we have three times as much wind and solar capacity.
As I noted here, there will be many occasions during the year when we will be throwing a third of the electricity we produce, when demand is low and wind and solar power are high.
The only way to have enough renewable capacity at times of stress during winter is to build large surpluses in.
What this latest news shows though is that there are already regional imbalances appearing, with too much solar power in local areas.
NESO’s own projections for 2030 show that these surpluses will add £15/MWh to electricity costs. Even that is optimistic, because it assumes we will be able to export some of it, which may not be the case. It also assumes grid expansions.
Even at £15/MWh, that works out at £5 billion a year.
Once again, the red herring of zonal pricing is mentioned in the Telegraph report:
Octopus has been campaigning for Britain’s energy market to be broken up into regions that set their own prices based on supply and demand. This reform, known as zonal pricing, would theoretically reduce or even eliminate constraint payments by encouraging developers to build infrastructure in areas where prices were highest, meaning there would be sufficient cabling.
The basic idea is that new generation will be attracted to areas with high demand, and consumers attracted to the areas where supply exceeds demand, with price differentials the driver.
But most new generation will be paid via CfDs, so will be unaffected by whatever the market price happens to be. Moreover, most will be offshore wind, and therefore not embedded regionally.
As for the idea that people and industry are suddenly going to relocate to the Scottish Highlands is ridiculous. Or that people are going to switch all their electrical appliances on when it is windy, just because prices come down,
Zonal pricing will no doubt be a good way for Octopus to charge higher prices. But the real solution is not to rearrange the deckchairs. It is to stop building wind and solar farms that cannot reliably meet demand when and where it is needed.
A sane Labour minister would denounce this nonsense and blame it on the foregoing Conservative mess up, and probably rightly so. But Mad Ed will argue that such an affront to rationality is a price we pay for ‘saving the climate’.
A sane Labour minister? I can’t think of one.
you nailed it, worldwide
The only time you will ever see a sane Labour MP is if you correctly prompt-engineer Midjourney to get around its natural inability to depict self-contradictory concepts, like square circles.
Mad Ed is even less popular than total idiot Starmer and Newsom
Farage will have a 55% clean sweep to wipe out Labor and the Tories.
Overall “balancing payments” could…. prove rather tricky. Hot on the heels of last week’s utter farce on disability benefits comes yet another:
“Starmer is bracing for a fresh backbench rebellion over special needs children after the Education Secretary failed to confirm whether vulnerable pupils would have the legal right to support in schools.”
https://www.gbnews.com/politics/politics-news-latest-keir-starmer-labour-rebellion-jeremy-corbyn-nigel-farage-reform-uk
“Hiring confidence has plunged to its lowest level in 13 years, according to accountancy and business firm BDO’s latest Employment Index, which slid again in June, dropping to 94.22. The report finds firms are now “holding back recruitment” as Downing Street limbers up for yet more tax rises after Starmer’s U-turns on winter fuel and welfare.”
https://order-order.com/2025/07/07/hiring-confidence-lowest-in-13-years-as-businesses-brace-for-tax-hikes/
And he is still throwing money Miliband’s way. The government view?
“Labour minister tells those worried about economy to ‘get stuffed‘“
https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/2078351/labour-minister-torsten-bell-economy-get-stuffed
That minister is none other than The Guardian’s Torsten Bell – up there with “economists” like Krugman etc.
I wonder how much longer the empty suit will waste such huge amounts of money we simply haven’t got on complete nonsense?
Instead of taxing to fight climate, the UK and Nutty Rutte’s NATO will be taxing to fight Russia.
The Muslim infested, crime-prone, tax-sucking, fast-growing co-horde will prevent the UK from doing both
And insolvency consultants Begbies Traynor have seen their income surge as companies go to the wall thanks to blubbing Rachel from Accounts.
Monday funny
The Guardian’s Owen Jones – speeding out of his box.
“Owen Jones: “I Wasn’t On Cocaine, I Was on Amphetamines” When Destroyed by Piers Morgan”
https://order-order.com/2025/07/07/owen-jones-i-wasnt-on-cocaine-i-was-on-amphetamines-when-destroyed-by-piers-morgan/
Not so funny
“British bill payers have already forked out a staggering £650 million this year just to pay wind farms not to produce electricity when it’s too windy, according to campaign website Wasted Wind. The National Grid can’t cope, so turbines are told to switch off, leaving the public to pick up the tab. That number is only rising…
In 2024, the cost to switch off turbines totalled £1 billion in so-called “constraint payments”. At this rate, 2025 will blow past that – landing at a projected £1.26 billion. That’s a 26% increase…
According to Renewable Energy Foundation, bill payers have also coughed up £102,500 to solar panel farms to switch off this year when there’s been too much sun. Here comes the sun, and I say: “It’s more bills”… – Guido Fawkes
Its only going to get worse, Scotland’s peak demand is 6Gw but if all the Scot Gov approved on shore windfarms are actually built there will be 48Gw capacity when going full tilt. That is 8 times the local requirements. For this surplus to be exported south there will need to be huge pylons built from the Highlands down to England despoiling the countryside even more. There has been no joined up planning to this at all, all based on Virtue Seeking idiots.
What is the point of building transmission for energy that is not available on demand? More power in the south when it is not needed?
Yes the UK Govt back in 2015 banned on shore Wind Farms in England and Wales. Scotland continued and thought it would be a good idea to add an excess of production to sell to England and Wales. No one thought about the grid upgrades required to move this surplus south. Hence partly why zonal pricing came about as an idea to force more wind farms in England and Wales now that Mad Ed Millivolt has removed the ban on Wind Farms south of the Scottish border as there is a 10 year gap to fill.
The other stupid idea was if Scotland became Independent then instead of selling the excess to E&W they were going to sell it to Germany instead.
Germany has made such a mess of its grid that the last thing they would need is surplus energy from Scotlands grid. They are rebuilding their coal fired infrastructure to get back stability and a fair price so industry can compete. what would they want with increased oversupply when they are likely to be in the same state of over generation as the Uk is. They are keeping particularly quiet about this – a sort of reverse virtue signalling!
Milliband take note
“No one thought…”
Telling phrase.
Durham County Council have recently rejected a plan to build a solar farm at Haswell Plough. The proposal was for 90,000 panels covering 154 acres. There were many local objections which the Council have sided with.
However last year Mad Ed gave the go ahead for the then UK’s biggest solar farm in Lincolnshire/Nottinghamshire overriding local objections. Will there be a repeat?
How much do fossil fuel plants get paid when they are forced to throttle back to make room for wind and solar.
If you answered nothing, then you are smarter than your average climate alarmist.
But they’ve also had to make investment in their plant. So why should they not also be compensated?
It gives the lie to the claim that unreliables are cheaper (as claimed by Milibrain et al).
Yet another stupid article from somebody who doesn’t understand how solar panels and solar inverters work. Solar inverters use MPPT (Maximum Power Point Tracking) to extract the highest possible amount of electricity from solar panels, as explained here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dNukdwBfoQ
Solar inverters also use MPPT to REDUCE the amount of electricity that is being taken from solar panels, otherwise my 12KW of solar panels would constantly be putting out 12KW on a sunny afternoon, and I would have to somehow get rid of 11KW of power, for HOURS every summer day. So solar inverters only take as much power from solar panels as the LOAD requires. For example, normally my house is using about 400W all the time in the background, for fridges, freezers, and my computer. When charging my batteries, the solar inverter takes as much power as possible from the solar panels. When the batteries are fully charged, it only takes about 400W. So EXACTLY THE SAME thing happens with commercial solar farms, otherwise they would have to get rid of insane amounts of unneeded energy, some of the time. This doesn’t happen.
Of course, no doubt the solar farms ARE being paid to NOT produce as much electricity as they can, at some times of the day, on certain days, but the basic misunderstanding of how solar inverters work is still being repeated over and over on this website, and it isn’t helping our cause.
so your point is????? I didnt quite catch it as it seems to align with the article
That has nothing to do with what is being discussed the output has to be shutoff from the grid for stability issues, it has absolutely nothing to do with how the inverter works.
In Australia, all new domestic solar inverters may be required to shut off or reduce power output under specific circumstances to maintain grid stability and safety. It is mandatory that all new inverters have the ability for the grid operator to control that function.
Your solar panel and inverter can track maximum whatever it likes but the grid operator will tell you to keep your power because they don’t want it. Obviously in the UK they are doing the ridiculous thing of not just not taking the power but paying the solar generator for not taking it.
Maybe earlier versions of inverters don’t have the same levels of self control as the later models?
When it comes to people, the newer ones seem to have less self control than do those who have been around awhile.
“somebody who doesn’t understand how solar panels and solar inverters work”
“otherwise my 12KW of solar panels would constantly be putting out 12KW on a sunny afternoon”
Someone definitely doesn’t understand how solar panels work, and no, it isn’t Paul.
PV panels produce voltage, i.e. potential, not power. You can draw current (and hence develop power) from them, with an appropriate load, i.e. resistance. (If you try to draw more current than they can sustain, the voltage drops. Maximizing the power on this curve is what MPPT does.)
Infinite resistance (open circuit) means no power is being developed at all. The panels just sit there getting nice and toasty in the sun, but doing literally nothing electrically.
In this example, solar farms are being paid not to produce power that they could have produced. They don’t have to produce it and then somehow throw it away with a big resistive heater; they simply don’t produce it at all, and yet still get paid. It’s a nice gig if you can get it.
“solar farms are being paid not to produce power that they could have produced. They don’t have to produce it and then somehow throw it away with a big resistive heater; they simply don’t produce it at all, and yet still get paid.”
That’s what Steve said …
“Solar inverters also use MPPT to REDUCE the amount of electricity that is being taken from solar panels,”
“solar inverters only take as much power from solar panels as the LOAD requires.”
“EXACTLY THE SAME thing happens with commercial solar farms, otherwise they would have to get rid of insane amounts of unneeded energy, some of the time. This doesn’t happen.
Of course, no doubt the solar farms ARE being paid to NOT produce as much electricity as they can, at some times of the day, on certain days,”
“That’s what Steve said …”
No he didn’t. MPPT has nothing to do with reducing power developed by a panel. That is exclusively a function of the load applied to it. Non-MPPT inverters still use efficient load-dependent pulse width modulation, not linear resistive voltage regulation, and therefore do not have to “get rid of” power – although they are not optimized to extract the maximum possible power from the panel under maximum load.
He said:
“Solar inverters also use MPPT to REDUCE the amount of electricity that is being taken from solar panels, otherwise my 12KW of solar panels would constantly be putting out 12KW on a sunny afternoon, and I would have to somehow get rid of 11KW of power,”
That’s not the purpose of MPPT, and that’s not how solar panels work.
If we give Steve the benefit of the doubt on his grasp of the relationship between voltage, current, resistance, and power, then his claim that “my 12 KW of solar panels would constantly be putting out 12 KW on a sunny afternoon” betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of how non-MPPT pulse-width-modulated inverters work. They are not fixed resistances.
So, here’s a plan:
Let’s build ever increasing amounts of wind and solar generation capacity, that you and I pay for . . . but we’ll think about how that generation may be utilised at a later date . . . this having nothing to do, of course, with the grotesque inefficiency of wind and solar generation in the first place.
An Engineer is accountable – do something wrong in terms of ethics or integrity . . . and you’re no longer an Engineer. Simple as that.
Politicians?
They are totally scientifically and engineering ignorant, just about to a man, and it doesn’t matter the party, but they’ve got their gold plated pensions ahead of them so . . . does truth and engineering reality and integrity matter to them?!!
Of course not.
So who are the so-called Engineers and Scientists who are advising these political clowns?!
If they are Members of any scientific or engineering Institution, they need to be . . . completely and utterly bloody ashamed of themselves.
Scientific or engineering Institutions ought to be completely and utterly bloody ashamed of themselves, but the stark reality is that most (here in the UK at any rate), as a matter of policy, are fan-boys of the global warming cult. If anyone is aware of such a body that actively and demonstrably speaks out against the nonsense, I’d be interested to know.
Policy should be spelled $Policy$
I hope coal and gas fired power stations were also paid to reduce their output !
The last operating coal plant was shut down recently. Gas plants can get their revenge when they are needed to prevent the grid from collapsing by charging sky high prices that we consumers also end up paying.
How long are the British people going to put up with this crap? If they finally come together and say no, this madness will end. For god sake don’t leave it up to your leaders. They are worse than worthless.
“If they finally come together and say no, this madness will end.”
Last year, the British people did finally come together … and said yes! … handing a landslide victory to the present shambolic government, now the same British people complain.
If you keep voting for inept, self-serving, career politicians, that’s what you’ll get … So suck it up & don’t complain, it’s your fault !!
“They are worse than worthless.”
Who, the leaders or the followers ???
Schools have been teaching that with enough government everything will get cheaper and better. All one needs is sufficient faith and patience.
But the truth is that barely 20% of the people voted for the Student Union clown show. An equal numbers of votes saw the Far Left Limp Dumbs led by Ed The Clown get over 70 MPs while Reform won just 5.
The UK people has become lambs since 1960, because they failed to resist the debilitating, tax-sucking, culturally different, chaos-creating millions from entering the UK
Large solar systems or a lot of little systems are weather/climate-altering heat islands
You could fry an egg on such black panels during midday.
Just dump the externalities onto struggletown rather than user pays-
Falling feed-ins and new export tariff frustrate SA solar customers
An interesting choice of currency for the title picture…
And the more unreliable power on the grid the more vulnerable it becomes to a blackout and who knows how many will die from it. Only 8 did in Spain but over 700 did in Texas.