‘Constraint payments’ for windfarm energy switch-offs have ‘run out of control’
Holyrood Notebook by Edward Mountain MSP
Is there anything more crazy than paying windfarms hundreds of millions of pounds in taxpayer cash to switch off and stop producing energy?
It has been happening across the country for years.
What is known as the “constraint payments” scheme, it basically involves the government’s National Energy System Operator (NESO) compensating energy firms because the national grid cannot accommodate the electricity they want to provide.
It’s a ludicrous state of affairs, and cost the public purse £117 million in the first six months of this year.
The likelihood of this happening in the north of Scotland is also far higher – at times over the last few years windfarms have been asked to cut 50 per cent of their planned production.
Because of the generous financial arrangements between the state and the renewables sector, that means these windfarm developers must be compensated accordingly.
The situation has run completely out of control, and it’s time for a change.
People across Caithness don’t particularly like wind turbines looming over their communities, and they are angry about the prospect of more.
Nor do they like pylons, or other associated energy infrastructure such as battery energy storage systems, which are often the size of several football fields.
But there is a solution which both the Scottish and UK governments should be pursuing, and it involves the incentivisation of hydrogen.
Rather than sit on unproduced energy by switching off, windfarms should continue spinning and start storing their own energy.
Using electrolysers, this could be converted to hydrogen, and then taken to the parts of Scotland which need that energy.
That uses existing infrastructure to its proper potential – there’s no point in having large turbines standing idly on the horizon when they could be working – and would cut out the need for these sizable constraint payments.
We should put windfarms on notice that they have to do this if they want to continue making a pretty penny from their endeavours.
We know the national grid isn’t strong enough to cope with all the planned energy we want to produce, so it’s time to think differently.
One of the reasons this doesn’t happen is the price which accompanies hydrogen is too high, and we can’t expect private companies to go into debt just to serve our energy needs.
That is where the UK and Scottish governments need to work together.
Too often they are at odds, irrespective of which political party is in Westminster, and that makes this kind of collaboration more difficult.
But the people of Caithness don’t care about petty political differences – they want to see results.
Ministers in London and Edinburgh must come up with a way of making this change an affordable reality.
Long-term, it would save the taxpayer serious money, take the pressure off a creaking national grid, and ensure greater energy security for homes across the country.
This debate doesn’t need to descend into a culture war; most people in the north of Scotland can see the effects of climate change, not least when it comes to harvests and wildfires.
They want to pursue clean, reliable energy.
But above all, they expect sensible solutions, and for big business and governments to working together in achieving the best possible outcomes.
Edward Mountain is a Scottish Conservative MSP for Highlands and Islands