Britain’s booming green energy generation has a costly side-effect: the national electricity system operator has had to compensate wind turbine operators that could have produced more clean electricity than the grid could take.
The cost of paying windfarms to temporarily switch off rose significantly in early 2025, surpassing £250 million in the first two months of the year. This figure not only includes these “constraint payments” to windfarm operators, but also payments to gas power plants to switch on and meet demand in the south of England that could theoretically be met by wind energy.
