Wind farms paid £900,000 to switch off for one night

[RWJ]

Wind farms operators were paid £900,000 by the National Grid to disconnect their turbines for one night because the electricity was not needed.

The payments, worth up to 20 times the value of the power they would have produced, raises serious concerns about such subsidies, which are paid for by the customer.
The six Scottish wind farms were asked to stop producing electricity on a particularly windy night last month as the National Grid was overloaded.
Their transition cables do not have the capacity to transfer the power to England and so they were switched off and the operators received compensation. One operator received £312,000, while another benefited by £263,000.


SOURCE: Telegraph

Wind farms paid £900,000 to switch off for one night - Telegraph

 

[IQ Electrical]

Wind farms operators were paid £900,000 by the National Grid to disconnect their turbines for one night because the electricity was not needed.

The payments, worth up to 20 times the value of the power they would have produced, raises serious concerns about such subsidies, which are paid for by the customer.
The six Scottish wind farms were asked to stop producing electricity on a particularly windy night last month as the National Grid was overloaded.
Their transition cables do not have the capacity to transfer the power to England and so they were switched off and the operators received compensation. One operator received £312,000, while another benefited by £263,000.


SOURCE: Telegraph

Wind farms paid £900,000 to switch off for one night - Telegraph

They're already the most expensive (per MW), unsuitable, ugly form of renewable energy and that's before they get subsidy for not operating!

How did OUR money get ploughed into these things?

 

[DurhamSparky]

thats unbelievable!!

 

[Phil]

what an absolute waste. and guess who gets to pick up the tab? thats right us the end consumer as usual

 

[baldelectrician]

The news from the election campaign in Scotland

SNP want to have 100% equivalent of Scotlands' electricity generated by renewables by 2020.
They will have extra capacity (existing Nuclear, Coal, Oil, Gas) as a standby
They will upgrade the national grid to take the additional load.

They also want to make more offshore (most of the new stuff)

They have cottoned on to the fact that all green energy is subject to a feed in tariff, the income will be paid by consumers down south as the energy will be flowing north to south

They reckon thousands of jobs (in Scotland) will come from this and be paid for by UK electricity customers

 

[baldelectrician]

You can take our electricity but can't take our freedom