U.K. wind curtailment costs $1.3B in 2024
The United Kingdom is experiencing record curtailment costs for wind power in 2024.
Curtailment costs are the costs associated with reducing electricity supply when demand is lower. Because wind and solar are overbuilt to meet peak demand during periods of low wind and solar output, they produce too much electricity when wind and solar output are high. Grid operators then must pay for some plants to turn off.
Burgeoning capacity and blustery weather should have driven huge growth in output in 2024. But the grid can’t cope, forcing the operator to pay wind farms to turn off, a cost ultimately borne by consumers. It’s a situation that puts at risk plans to decarbonize the network by 2030 and makes it harder to cut bills.
Crucial to the net zero grid target is a massive build-out of renewable power, particularly from wind. Britain has boosted its offshore fleet by 50% in the past five years and is set to double it in the next five, BloombergNEF data show.
But the grid hasn’t expanded at the same pace. As a result, the operator is increasingly paying wind farms, particularly those in Scotland, not to run. So far this year, the UK has spent more than £1 billion ($1.3 billion) in “congestion costs” to turn off plants that can’t deliver electricity because of grid constraints, and switch on others…
The utility aims to build an even bigger wind farm off Scotland that could further aggravate the bottleneck unless the grid is expanded. In a statement, it said developers need to harness Scottish renewables to deliver on the UK’s energy-security targets. And to that end, transmission infrastructure is key…
Curtailing generation has become increasingly common. This year’s congestion costs exceed last year’s total and are second only to 2022, when power prices were almost three times as high.
The overriding message of the piece is that building more transmission lines is necessary to meet the U.K.’ s net zero goals. More importantly, however, is that the costs of curtailing wind power — $1.3 billion in the U.K. in 2024 — should be factored into the cost of that technology and affect decisions about whether to adopt it. So should the costs of building thousands of miles of transmission lines. System-wide costs are what matter — and the U.K. is learning that.