Between 2012 and 2017 wind farm owners were paid £367 million in “constraint” payments – payments to not produce electricity. In 2017 they received roughly £2 million a week to do nothing.
On average this payment is 40 per cent higher than when they actually produce electricity for the National Grid. The costs are added to household electricity bills, ensuring that the consumer pays for the greed of the generating companies.
Wind farms are part of an unplanned, unbalanced energy industry and market. Instead we need a national energy strategy (see feature article Make energy independent), but without the cash bonanza which the energy companies have enjoyed since the privatisations of the 1980s.