For some days now locals on Shetland Mainland have noticed that none of the 103 turbines forming the Viking Energy developments have been turning. Most of them seem to have been frozen in one position, and potentially at risk of damage if hit by strong winds from the “wrong” direction. The local press has been contacted by several people about it. Having investigated what’s been going on, the Shetland News now has an article explaining what’s behind yet another period of inactivity on the part of the wind farm.
Thankfully for hard-pressed energy users and taxpayers, the latest downtime hasn’t been the result of SSE (Viking’s owners) milking the system for constraints payments. By way of brief digression, Shetland News also reported earlier this month that SSE received £9.25M in constraints payments for the Viking Energy wind farm, despite opening only in August 2024. They received £2.7M in October alone, finishing in third place for the year, despite only being operational (if so many closures can be described as being operational), behind only Seagreen and Moray East, both offshore wind farms.
However, it has been noted that the constraint payments have been drastically reduced in December and January. It may be that SSE have been told to reduce their constraints claims because of resulting adverse publicity.
In any event, we now have the official explanation for the recent failure of the massively controversial and environmentally unfriendly wind farm. The line is that it “was due to a planned maintenance outage of the 600MW HVDC cable to the Scottish mainland.” I am in no position to gainsay that, but if true, it seems to be remarkably inefficient, given that it started generating power only in August 2024. As Frank Hay, Chairman of Sustainable Shetland, is quoted as saying:
There seems to be a very high number of planned outages for a wind farm that has been operating for less than six months.
He wonders whether Viking Energy is experiencing more problems than SSE Renewables is prepared to admit, and so do I. The latest problems include the fact that 16 out of the 103 turbines on site require aviation lighting but only seven of these lighting units have been operating as they should. The breach of statutory requirements has been reported to the Civil Aviation Authority, so it will be interesting to see what happens next. Article 222 of the Civil Aviation Order 2016 requires any building, structure or erection, the height of which is 150 metres or more above ground level to be fitted with medium intensity steady red lights positioned as close as possible to the top of the obstacle and at intermediate levels spaced so far as practicable equally between the top lights and ground level with an interval of not more than 52 metres.
How can we expect the UK’s lights to be kept on by wind energy when it can’t even comply with its legal obligations to keep safety lights on atop their own turbines? To add one final irony to the whole sorry saga, the wind farm is dependent on back-up energy (translation, possibly batteries, but more likely diesel generators). SSE say they are working with their turbine contractor, Vestas, to “review our back up” power generation options on site should any future extended outages occur.
It’s all really not a good look.
Climate Scepticism 
And now the Shetland media is reporting that although the Viking Energy wind farm continues to be regularly constrained, after a public outcry it is now receiving between £5 and £7 per MWh for constraints payments, against the £30 per MWh it was receiving until 27th November 2024.
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Some points, – being “frozen in position” has serious implications for wind turbines. The main bearings will be subject to (false) Brinelling which if occurring often (likely,) will rapidly shorten life span, increase noise and reduce generation. Large ships in dock slowly power their props to stop this damage happening, wind turbines have to do the same.
Turbines at nil (or even low generation) are actually net consumers of electricity though, unlike nuclear plants, they do not appear to report this consumption. When you see instances of very low national generation figures on Gridwatch the reality is that allowing for “own use” they are actually a net demand overall – a double whammy of no power and increased load.
Interconnectors, are notoriously unreliable. I live in Kent where the first inter-connector from France “operated”- when it seemed to feel like it – from 1961 to 1984 with the UK inverter station at Dungeness nuclear plant. Subsequent links – IFA1, BritNed, Nemo, ElecLink, and soon NeuConnect all run into Kent – the “busiest” section of the grid. System trips are regular occurrences for all manner of reasons and on several occasions have threatened to bring down the entire UK grid. A ship dragging anchor dredged up 1000MW carrying cabling of IFA1 a few years ago, a suspicious fire at Sellindge converter station took out both IFA1 and ElecLink in 2022. ElecLink runs “dry” through the channel tunnel but is subject to the tunnel’s operating issues which come first. Downtimes can be critical and often unexplained as Kathryn Porter (Watt Logic) has recently publicised. The HVDC Shetland link will inevitably regularly go down and not always for “innocent” reasons.
The issue for Shetland is that 103 becalmed turbines require a lot of power to sustain them which is in addition to Shetland’s own domestic demand. With simultaneous inter-connector loss and Dunkelflaute (it will definitely happen more often than will be admitted) SSE will need power rather than risk damage to their precious but now static assets. The result being increased conventional and long term reliable generation capacity required (i.e. definitely not batteries) to cover for this but only on an expensive as and when needed basis. Alternatively (and more likely) islanders can expect unexplained “Demand Side Response” i.e. area blackouts so the existing power can be used to “protect” the wind turbines.
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Ray Sanders,
Many thanks indeed for those very valuable insights. It’s all just so much more of a dog’s dinner than I realised – and I knew it was a mess!
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Thanks for that info Ray.
From Mark:
“SSE say they are working with their turbine contractor, Vestas ….”
Your contribution”
“Turbines at nil (or even low generation) are actually net consumers of electricity though, unlike nuclear plants, they do not appear to report this consumption.”
From Vestas “Eigenverbrauch von Vestas-Windenergieanlagen” (Self-consumption ofVestas wind turbines), see Table on P2 – “Durchschnittlicher Eigenverbrauch” translates to “Average self-consumption”
So 3.3MW – 4.2MW (Vestas) turbines self-consume approx 48,000kWh pa, and their 5.6MW turbines self-consume approx 55,000kWh
Click to access 3.2%20%23%200020-4361.V09-Eigenverbrauch-von-Vestas-Windenergieanlagen-%280020-4361%29.pdf
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Thanks for that info Joe. Annual consumption use is useful to know but it’s only a guestimate to work out the actual power demand when static from that figure. Manufacturers seem to be very coy about disclosing that static demand figure seemingly losing it in the other annual operating consumption figures. Another interesting number would be the start up load initially driving the blades which would probably be much higher still. They must (hopefully) have some sequential system but who knows. I doubt SSE cares.
The issue for Shetland is that 113 multiplier. Such a concentration leads to simultaneous shutdown and start up and their existing non wind supplies surely can’t handle that plus their own normal demand with no wind and the inter-connector down. It seems just another accident waiting to happen and the Shetlanders are just being treated as collateral damage.
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Ray S & Joe P; thanks for those informative comments. Similar thoughts were crossing my mind about the disproportionate scale of the wind farm (440 MW) to the islands’ grid (max demand less than 140 MW, aiui). Lerwick power station is the major non-wind generator with a max output of about 70 MW – if everything works as much of it is old.
Take the scenario where it’s a breezy day and Viking is churning out, say, 300 MW. Then the link to the mainland goes down, unexpectedly. I’d imagine that things could get tricky rather quickly.
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