Wind farms paid to not raise power

The National Grid has paid wind farms not to generate power on very windy days, an executive has admitted – a move attacked by a senior MP as “lunacy”.

By The Newsroom

Published 8th Jun 2011, 07:00 BST

Nick Winser, National Grid’s UK executive director, said wind farms had been paid not to generate power on occasions in common with other forms of energy such as gas, coal and nuclear plants.

“That has been happening for the last 21 years,” he told members of the Commons select committee on energy and climate change.

The market arrangement contained compensation “where you can’t generate because of a lack of transmission infrastructure.”

The admission was attacked by Conservative MP Tim Yeo, chairman of the select committee.

The public might think that to pay off-shore wind farms a subsidy to make it worthwhile generating and then to pay them again, if it were too windy, not to generate, was a lunacy “which borders on the Common Agricultural Policy?” he said.

National Grid