From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
h/t Philip Bratby
From the Telegraph:
Britain’s wind farm turbines wasted enough energy to power all of London’s homes last year, new figures show.
A record 10 terawatt hours (TWh) of wind power went to waste in 2025, according to a report from energy analyst Montel – costing billpayers a total of £1.4bn in “curtailment costs”.
This was up 22pc on the year before, as growing strain on the grid prevented wind power from being transported to the cities and towns that need it most.
This results in so-called curtailment costs, which are paid to wind farms when they are asked to switch off.
At the same time, grid operators must call on gas plants to step in and keep the lights on with replacement power, often at great expense.
Analysts said that wind farms in Scotland were largely to blame.
Montel’s report said: “The amount of renewable electricity curtailed in Great Britain in 2025 (10TWh) could have met the combined electricity demand of every domestic household in London for the entire year.
“Northern Scotland has seen the most curtailment by far. Over 8.8TWh of wind power in northern Scotland was switched off, enough to also power all Scottish domestic electricity demand for the year.”
The cost of curtailment has been growing as Ed Miliband, the Energy Secretary, rolls out more renewable energy sources – such as wind and solar.
As well as paying wind developers, Montel said solar farms are also being asked to switch off because of bottlenecks.
Montel said: “Solar curtailment costs rose over the year to total over £252,000. While this is substantially lower than the corresponding figures for wind, it represents a rise from the negligible costs associated with solar curtailment in 2024.”
To combat curtailment, regulator Ofgem has approved plans for the UK’s three transmission operators – National Grid, Scottish Power and SSE – to spend up to £90bn on new lines and substations.
Full story here.
The cost is actually overstated, because we would still need to pay for one lot of electricity anyway.
As the Telegraph states, this is essentially a Scottish problem, as there is not enough transmission capacity to carry all the wind power south when it is windy. But naively, they then go on to say that OFGEM are spending £90 billion on grid upgrades to deal with this problem.
Plainly we are not going to spend £90 billion to save less than a billion a year. The upgrades are necessary to make the grid Net Zero ready, not just to connect Scottish wind farms.
What nobody at the Telegraph seems to have realised is that by 2030, or whenever Labour’s Clean Power Plan is rolled out, there will be many days when there is more wind and solar power generated than we can actually use.
No amount of new transmission lines will change this simple fact.
NESO analysed this problem in detail, when they reviewed Miliband’s plan in 2024. They calculated that we would have to throw away 83 TWh of surplus renewable energy – incl 61 TWh which they hope to sell at a loss, which is highly optimistic given that Europe will also be awash with surplus wind power.
https://www.neso.energy/document/346781/download
They estimate that we might get £40/MWh for these surplus exports, a loss of £39/MWh. Conversely we will pay £89/MWh when we need to import!
If we cannot export any surplus, the cost of annual curtailment would be £6.6 billion, based on the average wind/solar price of £79/MWh. That is now an understatement, given the latest CfD auctions.
Annual wind generation is projected to be 245 TWh, so we will end up throwing away a third of it.
Just consider today, for example.
Wind is currently supplying 43% of our electricity.
Miliband wants to triple that, which will give us 51 GW and 129% of total demand. Add on the 8% from nuclear, which cannot be switched on and off, and we get 137%.
It’s hard to think of a more crackpot way to run an energy system!
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