In A Nation of Great Import I railed against the fact that for a few days in August, the UK regularly imported significant volumes of electricity via the interconnectors from the European mainland. This is despite the fact that one assumes those days are close to the optimum time for the UK’s electricity grid with its increasing reliance on electricity generated by so-called renewables (on- and off-shore wind turbines and solar panels). After all, this is a time of low demand (long hours of daylight, relatively warm) and optimum generating conditions (sun high in the sky for much of the day, no winter dunkelflautes to worry about). Why, then, do we find we are so heavily reliant on the interconnectors when in theory we should be enjoying the benefits of energy security that Mr Miliband keeps telling us about?

Let there be no doubt, we are dependent on the interconnectors. It is difficult to obtain detailed and up-to-date figures. Perhaps the Freedom of Information request (reference: FOI-2025-2880) directed to the Office for National Statistics was sent to the wrong office, but it did ask relevant questions:

Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, I request the following information:

  1. Statistical data on the volume and cost of electricity and gas imported into the UK over the past 12 months.
  2. The average cost per kWh at which energy is imported and sold to UK energy suppliers.
  3. Any available data on profit margins or mark-ups applied between import and resale.
  4. A breakdown of energy sources (e.g., nuclear, gas, wind, solar) in the import and resale chain.

The response was rather disappointing:

Thank you for your request.

Unfortunately, we do not hold the information you have requested.

It is to be hoped that someone within officialdom does hold the information requested. The ONS suggested the questioner might try his/her luck with HMRC. They didn’t seem optimistic that DESNZ would be able to help much:

We do receive electricity and gas prices from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) but this does not disaggregate out any imported elements. The data we receive also do not attribute the source method of generation.

Fortunately, some information about this sort of thing is in the public domain. A Nuclear Industry Association press release of 16th July 2024 was rather alarming:

UK relies on other countries to power more than 10 million homes
June sees highest ever proportion of imported electricity

The UK is on track to import a record amount of electricity in 2024, smashing the previous record from 2021 by 50%. According to Nuclear Industry Association analysis of National Grid Electricity System Operator (ESO) data, net electricity imports to Great Britain totalled a record 9 TWh in the first quarter of 2024, and 14.95 TWh from January through the end of May.

Net imports have accounted for 15% of GB power, enough for 10.8 million homes. This puts Great Britain on track to import nearly 36 TWh over the whole year, 46% higher than the previous record of 24.6 TWh set in 2021. This would be higher than the planned output of Hinkley Point C nuclear power station (25 TWh) and more than the previously planned Wylfa Newydd power station on Anglesey (22 Twh).

Then there’s a Drax Global press release from 9th September 2024:

Power surge: UK spends £250 million each month importing record volumes of electricity from Europe

The UK is importing record amounts of power from Europe, with the country spending more than £250 million on power from abroad each month, new analysis by Drax Electric Insights has found.

A record 20% of the country’s electricity demand was met by imports from Europe during the second quarter of 2024. Imports accounted for more than double the volume of power generated by the country’s solar panels, and even nearly overtook gas the first time ever…

…Britain has imported electricity from abroad since 1961 but changing power grids and trading rules has led to a sharp rise both in the number of interconnectors, and the volume of power flowing into the country in recent years. During the second quarter of 2024, Britain imported 12.2 TWh, while exports were just 3 TWh.

Admittedly, both the nuclear industry and Drax have a vested interest in shouting about the problems we in the UK face with regard to electricity generation, since both seek to claim that they can be a large part of the solution. Still, the information they have dug up and presented to us would seem to be factually accurate.

That, then, is the rather problematic background. Why are we in this mess?

Part (admittedly only part) of the explanation can be found in curtailments (with their associated costs). Montel has recently produced a report as to curtailed renewables in GB and Ireland, which can be downloaded from here. It also contains some shocking statistics, relating to just the first half of 2025.

The highlights (perhaps better described as lowlights) include the fact that Britain saw 4.6TWh of curtailed electricity during those six months, a figure that represents a 15% increase on the same period in 2024. The associated curtailment payments cost us £152m. Northern Scotland accounted for 86% of the total curtailed volume and 76% of the total costs.

The Executive summary asserts that in Scotland alone the amount of wind energy curtailed in the first six months of 2025 could have met the combined electricity demand consumption of all Scottish domestic household consumers over the same period. It’s probably worth making the point that it wouldn’t have done so reliably and without the need for back-up, even had it not been curtailed. Nevertheless, it’s a dramatic and striking piece of information.

The report points out that demand for electricity is greatest in the south of England, yet wind farms are being built in great numbers in Scotland and off its coasts, because those are windier locations than the south of England, and this way the wind farm operators maximise their profits. The problem is that energy is lost as it is transmitted south, and that problem is exacerbated by the fact that the necessary infrastructure is not in place to cope with the volumes of electricity being (sporadically) produced when the wind is blowing. The Balancing Mechanism thus involves constraining the Scottish wind farms and turning up gas plants near London. As increasing volumes of wind power come online (and there is no sign of the tsunami of new wind farm applications slowing down) we have reached the absurd situation where in some months the total curtailment of wind power in northern Scotland is almost 50% of what is available. Overall, only 63% of the energy that could have been generated, actually made it to the grid. As Montel says: “The costs of balancing the system are ultimately fed back to the consumer in the form of a tariff on their energy bills.”

Nevertheless, the Viking Energy wind farm went ahead in Shetland in the face of both logic and massive local opposition (including a Court case). Its performance to date has been pathetic, to say the least. On 19th April 12025 Shetland News reported thus:

What was promoted as the UK’s “most productive onshore wind farm” is turning out to be one of the country’s most poorly performing.

Rather than producing electricity at a load factor of around 50 per cent, as forecast and promoted by owner SSE Renewables, the Viking Energy wind farm has so far been churning out electricity at a rate of just 17 per cent of what is potentially possible….

…The £600 million wind farm in the central mainland of Shetland is standing idle for long periods due to constraints and bottlenecks in the national grid network.

The Viking wind farm ranked third for the highest amount of energy going unused in the UK in 2024…[despite becoming operational only late in the summer of 2024].

One might have thought that hard data of this sort would have given both renewable energy companies and the authorities pause for thought, but it seems not. I suppose renewable energy companies aren’t dismayed by this information – they make money whether they generate power or whether they are paid to switch off.

The problem going forward is that the roll-out of wind projects in Scotland is, as noted above, not expected to slow down. Should all currently anticipated projects be completed then Scottish wind generation capacity would be increased threefold. If local flexibility and grid capacity remain at current levels, then curtailment volumes and costs could rise by a similar order of magnitude, and this could continue to drive up consumer bills.

We used to have an excellent system for generating electricity and getting it to the places where it was needed. Gas- and coal-fired power stations were situated near large population centres. It was cheap, not least because it didn’t have artificial (made-up) “carbon prices” loaded onto the fossil fuels that generated it, because it didn’t see significant volumes lost in transmission from remote locations, and because power generators weren’t regularly paid to switch off. It didn’t depend on the vagaries of the weather, and we weren’t dependent on foreigners to help us to keep the lights on. It didn’t involve massive cost (both financial and environmental) in building pylons and associated infrastructure across swathes of the UK countryside. It didn’t require expensive, toxic, and potentially dangerous (but ultimately ineffectual) battery back-up. The planning rules didn’t have to be changed to force through developments required by the grid but opposed by sensible local residents. The current system, by contrast, is expensive and dysfunctional. No sane person would choose to make these changes to replace the cheap, reliable and efficient system we used to rely on. We are increasingly in a mess of our own making, and it’s down to nothing other than quasi-religious dogma. We aren’t listening to the engineers. We aren’t “following the science”. We are making everything worse.

28 Comments

  1. Interesting but you fail to look at the bigger picture- each and every Company involved in the Renewable Energy Scam will when required, have a need for a ex-ministerial director, consultant or suitably embedded individual/s to maintain the scam at the taxpayers expense- do you think any of the current crop of political chancers are going to risk their future financial wealth by putting the interests of the People over their own pockets!
    The days of politicians going into battle on behalf of their constituents and the People are long gone, now it is just say whatever gets the votes then do you damnest to ensure you have sufficient “markers” to ensure the directorships, consultancies and entry onto quangos come flying thick and fast once you decide you have made your pile and wish to enjoy it- sod the stupid “gammons” who actually believed that you had their interests as a primary concern- I’m All Right Jack is the political mantra.

    Like

  2. Thank you Mark – another excellent article. You concluding paragraph is especially powerful. The message is clear and should be widely available – otherwise it’s simply preaching to the choir. But how can we achieve that? That I believe is the central problem of Cliscep: its full of well-researched, interesting and nicely presented material but it only reaches a limited audience of supporters.

    Liked by 3 people

  4. Thank you, Robin.

    I would give up if I didn’t feel confident that things are heading in the right direction. There is growing scepticism in the country about the climate crisis (sic) agenda and about energy policy. Here at Cliscep our readership is growing – increasing numbers of subscribers; the Daily Sceptic has picked up on us and links to our articles, thereby driving traffic; and some social media groups are also linking to our articles, for all of which I am grateful.

    Admittedly, even then, we are probably preaching to increasing numbers of the converted,, but I hope and trust that those increasing numbers are spreading the word among others too. I would say “keep the faith”, but it’s the other lot who are the faithful. We are the rationalists.

    Liked by 2 people

  5. The UK is now out of control, accelerating fast towards a brick wall. Our crumbling energy infrastructure, subservient to Green grift profiteers and a pseudoscientific, technologically illiterate Climate Crisis cult isn’t the half of it. Brace yourselves – the coming societal/economic crash is going to be monumentally destructive.

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  6. Jaime, please expand. For example, do you think such a crash will affect only the little people? Or will (some of) our UK elites be negatively impacted too? Regards, John C.

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  7. The logic of placing generators close to where the power is needed is unassailable. Unfortunately, we’ve pursued the opposite course, and the more dispersed the generators get, the more expensive electricity gets.

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  8. Between you, you guys cover a large area of expertise, which I read whenever I can. I forward your articles to others in the Borders when I think they will make an impact. Above all, you provide frequent insights which are very useful if not immediately quotable.

    This article highlights exactly what it’s going on in the Borders — which includes multiple BESS sites, and enormous pylon construction to attempt to shift the power south. On top of multiple wind farm and solar applications. As a result there is a growing groundswell of discontent in the whole of the Borders — and Dumfries and Galloway — which is gradually coalescing and becoming far more effective.

    PLEASE do not give up!! Blogs such as this one, Eigen Values, and Gordon Hughes

    Liked by 2 people

  9. …. sorry, my fault …. all give invaluable information we need to counter the propaganda we see time and again from the renewable industry and the DESNZ.

    Thank you!!

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  10. A very complex subject but here goes! Not all electricity is the same. Grids around the world run on alternating current (AC). The “power” available in AC (“Apparent” power) comprises both “Real” power and “Reactive” power. This latter power is so incredibly complex to explain that even electrical engineers often refer to it as either “Phantom” or “Ghost” power but usually by its unit, VAr. – Volt Ampere Reactive – certainly not Video Assistant Referee!

    Simply put, online it is described as “the component of AC (alternating current) power that does not perform useful work but instead creates and sustains the electric and magnetic fields in components like motors and inductors“. Firstly it is important to remember Solar Panels generate Direct Current (DC) and it is physically impossible for Reactive Power to exist in DC solar panels nor DC storing batteries. Wind turbines are also of little use in production or regulation of Reactive power.

    The best website to explain the staggeringly important role of Reactive power is, ironically, Drax (they know which side their “bread is buttered”)

    https://www.drax.com/uk/power-generation/silent-force-moves-electricity/

    Reactive power is essential to “move” electricity around grids and if it gets out of control it can collapse grids on spectacularly large scales as Drax explains with the major North American collapse.

    Interconnectors are High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) and thus cannot on their own contribute any Reactive power either though there are means of synthesising VAr at the converter stations. The point is that most of the power demand is based around London and the south east which also happens to be where the interconnectors from Fance, Belgium, the Netherlands and the soon to be Germany make connection. (Kent is a huge connection point.) The Denmark link comes in at East Anglia and only the Norway link is further north. The short route from I/C to the major demand centre is far less burdensome on Reactive power than remote and highly variable generators hundreds of miles away that might not transmit no matter how much you expand the “wires” component.

    Many people discuss the upgrade to cabling required to accomodate offshore and Scottish wind farms as well as solar farms further south but that is only part of the story. Additional kit such as Synchronous condensers, Static VAR compensators, Statcoms et alia are also required to proactively modify and control the continuously variable VAr requirements of the grid. This kit is very expensive, for example a Synchronous condenser is effectively a standard turbine generator just without the fueled power station to run it, thus it consumes power to control power. Large gensets are very expensive indeed and only made to special order – they are not “off the shelf” items.

    In the increasing absence of domestic large generators be they coal, gas, oil (yes we used to have some massive oil fired plants – aka Thatcher’s secret weapon) or nuclear, Reactive power is become very precarious. Returning to Drax they obviously are experts in this and know that no matter how farcical their wood burning is, they are desperately needed and there is no way the government can currently do withou them. It would make much more sense to convert back to coal to up the power rating and also reopen the older mothballed units.

    Returning to the main point, in crushing our domestic fuel generation we are ever increasingly dependent on imports. At our current trajectory we will likely be importing 35 to 40% of our supply needs in the not too distant future. One small European wide weather blip and we will be hung out to dry ……or more likely freeze to death.

    Sorry lecture over!

    Liked by 4 people

  12. Ray, to get a simple mechanical analogy of reactive electrical power I find it useful to think of a child bouncing up and down on the mattress of a bed. As the child bounces up and down the springs in the mattress first compress under the child’s weight to absorb and thereby briefly store mechanical energy. And then, as the child bounces into the air, the springs expand and thereby return to their relaxed state; the stored mechanical energy in the spring has been used to push the child up into the air and the spring returns to its relaxed state (with no mechanical energy stored).

    With good mechanical springs there is very little damping and, to a good approximation, the bouncing process is lossless; the same is largely true with reactive power in the electrical grid where the reactive energy is first-stored-and-then-returned to the grid every half cycle. This reactive electrical energy is stored in both (i) inductive parts of the circuitry where there are wires forming loops (i.e. pretty much everywhere since electricity flows around a closed, but often very large, circuit), and (ii) capacitive parts of the circuit such as capacitors and the insulation of HV cables. Regards, John C.

    Liked by 1 person

  13. Ray, for completeness I should say that inductors store their reactive energy in their magnetic field; the latter is a characteristic of electric currents. By contrast capacitors store their energy in the electric field. The electric field is associated with electrical potential difference (more commonly known as voltage). Regards, John C.

    Liked by 1 person

  14. For non-electricals, there are direct analogies between electrical parameters and water flowing in a pipe system. Electric current (measured in ampères or amps) is similar to “litres (or gallons) per second” flowing in a pipe. By contrast, electrical voltage (or potential difference) is similar to the “difference in water pressure between two points of the piping system”. Regards, John C.

    Liked by 1 person

  15. Ray and John C,

    Thank you both for the explanations. I wonder how much of that is known/understood by net zero enthusiast’s in Westminster, Holyrood and the Welsh Senedd? Ed Miliband?

    Lost in transmission , I suspect!

    Liked by 1 person

  16. Very interesting, including the comments from Ray and John. I’m embarrassed to say I know very little about reactive power on the grid, or that it (or its lack) was complicit in the massive August 2003 North American power outage (from Ray’s linked Drax article).

    There has been much comment since the April 2025 pan-Iberian power outage about lack of inertia on the grid contributing to lack of resilience but I haven’t seen much about the problems of dealing with reactive power. I note from searching in Kathryn Porter’s website that she has posted on it, e.g. here: https://watt-logic.com/2021/02/15/synchronous-condenser/.

    Expanding the grid massively with grid-incompatible renewables seems so Heath Robinson and frankly dangerous (as well as pointless), literally a giant experiment with all the households and businesses in the country as unknowing guinea pigs. We read about their plans to install giant flywheels and synchronous converters to try to keep it all up and running, but who really knows if it will work, i.e. will never result in any catastrophic national power outages.

    In my opinion UK Net Zero is utterly pointless and we should stop deploying any more renewables and decommission the redundant existing fleet as soon as possible, as laid out in this post hosted by my pal Ed Hoskins: https://edmhdotme.wpcomstaging.com/the-charade-of-net-zero-2/.

    Liked by 1 person

  17. Doug,

    Thank you for the link. As for your friend and mine, here’s a link direct to Ed Hoskins’ website. Always worth a read:

    Home

    Liked by 1 person

  19. Mark – as usual a well researched & great post, how you do this time after time is beyond me.

    Only slight niggle is the end – “We aren’t listening to the engineers. We aren’t “following the science”.”

    Wish you had left it as “We aren’t listening to the engineers”.

    Liked by 1 person

  20. Pingback: News Round-Up – The Daily Sceptic

  21. Dfhunter,

    Thank you for the compliment. Regarding the niggle, I thought long and hard about whether or not to include “not following the science”. In the end I decided to do so, because as well as pointing out that the way our grid is being re-engineered is against what most engineers would describe as sensible, it’s also pretty stupid when one considers the science associated with electricity. I think that is borne out by some of the well-informed comments below the line. Given that we are endlessly told that we must “follow the science”, I wanted to demonstrate that UK energy policy isn’t doing that.

    However, I take your point. Sometimes there’s a fine line between getting it right and getting it wrong.

    Liked by 1 person

  22. Mark H: “I wonder how much of that is known/understood by net zero enthusiast’s in Westminster, Holyrood and the Welsh Senedd? Ed Miliband?”

    I very much doubt if any of the politicos and their advisors have a clue. However someone is aware of the looming problems as efforts are under way to try and improve grid stability and resilience. A few months ago I read a post (on a motoring form, iirc!) by someone involved in a programme to install smart inverters and synchronous condensers – unfortunately I can’t find it! Synchronous condensers are a key element. Apparently 7 have been installed with a further 61 planned. I don’t recall any technical details so can’t tell whether this is a significant number.

    Lastly, may I add my thanks to Ray and John C for their informative input.

    Liked by 1 person

  23. To add to both my earlier comments and John Cullens authoritative responses, at the risk of really boring people, there are quite a few other complex aspects to consider that seem to sail way over both the politicians and current set of advisors heads. Fuelled generators are all synchronised to each other. That does not just mean they are all rotating at the same speed rather if you were to mark a Top dead centre spot on the rotor, every generator would pass that spot simultaneously no matter how far apart. Simply explained here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchroscope

    This effectively creates one beating heart controlling the entire powerful system. Wind, solar, batteries even small hydro plants cannot directly link to this and operate a synthetic system that “reads” the grid conditions and tries to copy them. removing large fueld generators creates a lack of total synchronicity and has numerous deficiencies notably “Short Circuit Level” (SCL) “Pound for pound” renewables offer between a fifth and as little as a 7th of the SCL that a conventional fueled plant does. Remember that August 2019 near grid collapse? Lots of solar and wind on the grid, litlle conventional generation and then a lightning strike. Whatever “reasons/excuses” were made up, it was inadequate SCL that set things spiralling down. This is a well know problem but try getting the renewables lobbyists to admit to it! The problem is explained in detail here so nobody can claim they didn’t know.

    https://www.neso.energy/news/what-short-circuit-level#:~:text=Why%20is%20SCL%20lower%20than,energy%20system%20with%20low%20SCL.

    There are numerous other problems. Knitting a patchwork quilt of fixes just ain’t gonna work.

    Liked by 2 people

  24. Thank you Ray, and for the informative links, which usefully explain the problems. They are also suggestive of there being significant costs to solve the problem, a problem caused purely by our increasing reliance on renewables.

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  25. The above information was kindly supplied by Ed Hoskins. It contains some interesting food for thought.

    Like

  27. Building power hungry AI data centres mainly in the M25 zone and concentrating wind farms in Northern Scotland doesn’t smack of sound thinking.

    Like

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