Britain’s biggest offshore wind farm has been caught wasting most of the electricity it makes, because the grid cannot cope.
The Seagreen wind farm off Scotland’s east coast threw away around three quarters of its power last year after being paid to switch its turbines off.
Newly published accounts show that 77 percent of the energy generated by Seagreen never reached homes or businesses, despite the site boasting 114 giant turbines.
The problem is not a lack of wind, but a lack of wires. There is not enough grid capacity to move the electricity south to where demand is highest, meaning turbines are ordered to slow down or stop altogether.
Seagreen is run by energy firm SSE, alongside TotalEnergies of France and Thailand’s PTT Exploration and Production. Under government backed rules, wind farms are compensated when they are forced to shut down, even if they are capable of producing power.
SSE would not say how much Seagreen was paid, but the Renewable Energy Foundation estimates the bill could be more than £200 million for just one year.
These so called constraint payments are added to household and business energy bills as network charges. Across the UK, they totalled about £1.7 billion last year and are expected to rocket to £8 billion by 2030.
Claire Coutinho, the shadow energy secretary, hit out at the policy and blamed Energy Secretary Ed Miliband. She said, “What other sector do we pay people not to produce anything? We’re spending £1bn switching wind farms off today, but thanks to Ed Miliband’s mad dash for renewables, we’ll be spending £8bn by 2030. We simply cannot afford an approach that makes our energy system higher cost and less productive. Cheap, reliable energy must come first.”
Seagreen began operating in October 2022. While its turbines have a headline capacity of one gigawatt, actual output is far lower because wind strength constantly changes.
Power from the site comes ashore at Carnoustie in Angus before travelling underground to a substation near Dundee. Bottlenecks along this route are blamed for stopping electricity flowing when winds are strong.
The National Energy System Operator controls power flows and tells generators when to cut output. It also runs the Balancing Mechanism, which pays wind farms for wasted electricity. It declined to comment on Seagreen’s payments.
Reform UK energy spokesman Richard Tice said the system was broken. He said, “Wind farms are so inefficient and unreliable that some are being paid hundreds of millions per year in constraint subsidies; less than 25pc of output is going to the grid. It shows that renewables are increasing bills.”
SSE said the answer was more grid investment. A spokesman said, “A wind farm switched off represents potential waiting to be unlocked. The UK has built renewables where the resources are strongest, and now we need to upgrade the grid to eliminate bottlenecks so we can harness more of that energy, more of the time.”
The company said it plans to invest £27 billion between 2025 and 2030 to upgrade infrastructure.
Renewable UK said new grid links and energy storage were urgently needed to reduce waste. Ofgem added that better use of homegrown power would cut exposure to volatile gas prices.
But critics say there is another obvious solution. Instead of paying wind farms to shut down when the wind blows too hard, excess electricity could be used on site for energy hungry activities such as bitcoin mining.
By placing computing centres next to turbines, surplus power could be turned into digital assets rather than dumped. Supporters say it would mean fewer payments for wasted wind and more value from Britain’s green energy boom, instead of millions of pounds disappearing into thin air every time the turbines stop.
