Scotland's biggest wind farms have been paid £11.1million not to produce electricity. Seemingly firms are paid by the National Grid to stop producing electricity as there was a danger the grid could be overloaded. Six or so years ago I worked for a firm delivering essential components for these wind turbines all over Scotland but mainly the Crystal Rig wind farm in the Borders which was fun to get to in the winter across frozen farm land and business was good. These wind farms were an absolute gold mine to the land owners as they were usually situated on land only good enough for hardy sheep and cattle to graze. What I do not understand is that these payments for not producing electricity can be up to twice what the firms receive for not producing power. So how does that work? And what is the point of continually building these wind farms if at the end of the day A) if it is too windy, a common problem in Scotland, the turbines auto shut off and B) the firms are paid more for not producing than for generating electricity. I wonder could I bung up a wind turbine then wait on the cheques to roll in?
It's nothing to do with being too windy. If the grid is overloaded the quickest way to stop power being added is to shut a wind farm off. It takes a lot less time than trying to shut off a nuclear or coal fuelled power station. The grid signs agreements to purchase electricity from wind farms (via a trading system) and the price is agreed a points during the day. The price paid is exclusive of whether or not the grid is accepting energy from the wind farm. There is also a compensation payment made when the a wind farm is ordered to stop producing energy by the grid. The owners/operators of wind farms have invested millions in them and need to get something back for their trouble. Source: I work for the company that manages Crystal Rig and over 1/4 of the rest of the wind farms in the UK.
Hold on a minute! My ever rising energy bill is not due to insufficient supply, but due to too much supply?
Can't tell what the wholesale people do, only from the farms to the grid. After that it's anyone's guess
Essentially yes. We have a local guy who lives on a farm on a hill. He's had a wind turbine built in his fields. Got it all connected to the national grid and he earns ~£2000 a month as well as not paying for his electric.
Up here they get planning easy for wind farms pretty much anywhere they want to stick one, Only once have one been refused up here and that was because they wanted to plonk a turbine in a peat bog that has special scientific interest.
Proably have to shut a few more off then as our local plant is still in maintenance mode and is due to be running soon. xD
Problem is it takes 2 weeks to get a coal station up to full whack before it can join the grid and supply. What we need is more energy storage, we have some in the form of reservoirs up hills and releasing the reservoir through turbines when the grid needs a boost, but its not nearly enough and is way to inefficient.
They have been looking into ways of storing it into what's sorta described as large batteries. However that project at my Dad's plan was scrapped as NPower decided it wasn't needed. All the kit is still there I belive 6 years later
I'm north of the border too dude They are getting more picky about onshore array's now. Offshore are more preferable as they are away from people's houses. Personally I think they look awesome - there's one up the hill behind my town and I love seeing it on the way home. Plus they keep me in a job
I can see 4 of them on the hill from my bedroom / bathroom and the living room I can even hear them in the night when the wind is in the right direction
The real money is in medium-term mass storage of energy and global smart grids. Figure that out and you'll be sniffing at £11m!
PSH has efficiency in 70-80% range, there is really no other more efficient or economically viable large scale method to store energy.
How cool is that! My wife and I once walked around a wind farm of about 15 turbines. Standing right below them and hearing the sound they made was awesome.
as for the storage, they have been talking about using electric cars as storage and boost whilst they are plugged in.
Actually some research reckons that they can send like a sound wave and if you're within a certain distance it can cause headaches and make you feel sick, not had that myself though. Tbh the novelty wears off pretty quick when you have to live with them every day.
I'm told that basically what happens when the usage on the grid is low is that it costs more money to shutdown and start up a powerstation so what they do is basically tell the grid they will run through that period for free. The grid then uses the money it's not having to use to buy the supply to then pay the Wind farms to do nothing.
Not quite. The Grid is god and what they say goes. In theory they have a kill switch that will disconnect any wind farm or power station from the grid. The energy produced is sold via a trading system and when they want to curtail a wind farm's production they have to pay out at the last agreed price. This varies depending on demand so if there was high demand before a curtailment the grid has to pay that amount even through they are not accepting energy from the wind farm. In the case of one curtailment at Crystal Rig it was ordered to be turned off for 8 hours and the grid had to pay £1.8 million quid. It's all supply and demand and balances out in the end.
