Wasted Wind Power Adds £40 To Household Energy Bills, Says Think Tank
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When it is very windy, the grid cannot handle the extra power generated. Wind farms are paid to switch off and gas-powered stations are paid to fire up. The cost is passed on to consumers.
The government said major reforms will halve the time it takes to build energy networks to cope with extra wind power.
Energy regulator Ofgem announced new rules in November, which it said would speed up grid connections.
Most of the UK's offshore wind farms are in England - Dogger Bank off the coast of Yorkshire is the largest in the world. Meanwhile, around half of onshore wind farms are in Scotland but most electricity is used in south-east England.
Carbon Tracker said the main problem in getting electricity to where it is needed is a bottleneck in transmission between Scotland and England.
The practice of switching off wind farms and ramping up power stations is known as "wind curtailment" and the costs are passed on to consumers, it said.
[...] "The problem is, there are not enough cables. The logical solution would be to build more grid infrastructure," said Lorenzo Sani, analyst at Carbon Tracker.
"It's not even that expensive," he added, compared with mounting wind curtailment costs.
[...] However, historically it has taken between 10 and 15 years for new transmission cables to be approved.
[...] In November, the government set out a plan to reduce the time it takes to build new infrastructure from 14 to seven years, "speeding up grid connections, supporting thousands of jobs and reducing electricity bills for households across Great Britain", a spokesperson said.
Energy regulator Ofgem said there was a "long queue" of energy projects "which could generate almost 400GW of electricity - well in excess of what is needed to power the entire British energy system".
The watchdog said new rules "will allow stalled or speculative 'zombie' projects to be forced out of the queue, meaning viable projects can be connected quicker".
Mr Sani from Carbon Tracker said it was unclear how much difference these projects would make before 2030.
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