Money for old rope!

Not everything went to plan!

Oops! Not again.

The Gordonbrush Wind Farm near Brora, the 36  turbine SSE developement that has just come on line is already coining it in. The wind farm was not finally commissioned until the 12th June, but constraint payments were made to it on June 6th (£30,475), June the 7th (£46,974) and on the 8th June (£64,079). A total of just shy of £142,000. SSE says that the wind farm was undergoing final stress testing at the time. Constraint payments are made by the National Grid to avoid overloading the electricity network and the cost is offset to household electricity bills. SSE continued to say that there is nothing unusual in this. Next time I want to go out to a restaurant that hasn’t actually opened yet will I get paid for not going. If it is normal to pay wind farms that have not been finally commissioned to not generate electricity, then may I suggest that the whole area needs a good spring clean. It is a scandal that wind farms are being built in increasing numbers in areas where the connectivity is lagging behind and that the grid is obliged to accept their expensive electricity in preferrence to more stable supplies. The Grid is a complicated monster and the fact that variable power requires stable supplies to be cut back often initiating constraint payments to gas, coal and nuclear as part of the balancing mechanism is simply wrong. Electricity is traded as are most commodities. The Grid can calculate their requirements and buy accordingly. It is the intermittent supply of renewables, predominantly wind, that throws the whole system out of sync and triggers part of this constraints system but made much worse when connectivity cannot cope with capacity output in favourable wind conditions. This was the fault of the political decisions taken by the ministers in the intial months of the Race to Wind. Realisation that they got it wildly wrong should mean that now they listen to the engineers and re-address the issue. Common sense must prevail and giving operators and developers of wind arms ‘money for old rope’ must stop! Especially when the Wind Farm is not even fully commissioned!