Wind farm stopped generating electricity and received compensation

Are wind farm operators getting paid to stop producing power?

And they found a big problem lurking in the UK’s renewable energy market: some wind farm operators were routinely overestimating their production forecasts, and traders and market experts say that, in effect, they’re getting paid to stop producing power that they wouldn’t have produced anyway.

Why were wind farm operators paid £12m?

Wind farm operators were recently paid more than £12m in compensation by the UK government for turning off their turbines because the grid was at risk of being overloaded. What are the reasons that have led to such high payments, and are current regulations justified? We take a closer look. Karankawa Wind Farm is equipped with 124 GE wind turbines.

How much did wind farms get paid last year?

Wind farms were paid more than £100 million last year to switch off their turbines and NOT produce electricity, the Telegraph can disclose. The payments - equivalent to £2 million a week - were made to the big energy firms that own the giant wind farms.

Who pays for a curtailed wind farm?

While the curtailed wind farm is paid by their customer as usual, the energy shortfall on the other side of the grid bottleneck is supplied by the Electricity System Operator (ESO) from other generators (typically fossil fuelled generators) and usually at premium price because of the extremely short notice.

Do wind farm operators exaggerate how much energy they plan to produce?

Adding to that expense, some wind farm operators exaggerate how much energy they say they intend to produce, which boosts the payments they receive for turning off, according to nine people – traders, academics and market experts – most of whom agreed to discuss this controversial behavior only on condition of anonymity.

Why do wind farms pay to power off?

But wind can be unpredictable and the grid can’t always handle the power wind turbines generate on blustery days — and so to protect the grid, operators sometimes pay wind farms to power off. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.