I wrote Money for Nothing over four years ago. Since then quite a lot has changed (for the worse).

The Renewable Energy Foundation is a great source of information, not least with regard to constraints payments (among other things), and its website helps to keep track of the way in which the situation continues to deteriorate.

My interest in this topic was re-kindled thanks to a post on the Facebook Page of the campaign group “Stop More Windfarms on Shetland”. It told me that “October was the best month so far this year for constraint payments to Viking [Energy Wind Farm on Shetland]. Payments in excess of £1.5 million were made.”

Given the boasts that were made by the owners, SSE, as to how productive this wind farm was to be (“once fully operational [Viking] will be the UK’s most productive onshore wind farm”), due to its extremely windy location, it’s more than a little ironic that it seems to be switched off for so much of the time because the grid can’t cope. On 14^th April 2025 Shetland News produced a pretty damning report:

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 average load factor for onshore wind farms in the UK currently stands at 26.34 per cent, according to Renewables UK. For offshore projects the average output rises to just over 40 per cent.

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…

Sadly, the joke is on electricity users, as we are paying for it to do nothing for so much of the time.

Despite not coming online until August 2024, it made £9,294,018 in constraints payments in just five months last year, including a staggering £2,732,682 in October 2024, a figure which was almost matched in its first month of “operation” (£2,502,479). So far this year, not surpisingly, more MWh have been constrained (897,326 -v- 464,320 last year) but with an average price of £8 per MWh constrained (-v- £20 last year), sitting idle for lengthy periods hasn’t proved to be quite so profitable for SSE so far this year. Still, £7,520,342 to date in 2025, for doing nothing, isn’t to be sniffed at. In each of three months this year so far (June, September and October) SSE has received well over £1 million for its Viking Energy Wind Farm to sit idle.

Constraints payments are higher for those wind farms operating under active Contracts for Difference (CfD). As I understand it, SSE has not yet triggered its CfD for Viking, presumably because it currently making more money by not doing so. If it gets around to triggering it (which I assume it will when it calculates it can maximise its profits by so doing) its constraints payments may well grow – certainly the payment per MWh constrained will probably increase at that point.

Although it’s fun (in an anger-inducing sort of way) to point at the supposedly high factor Shetland wind farm for failing to produce energy, it’s a much bigger picture over the whole of Scotland. The total numbers here dwarf those for Viking Energy. As the number of wind farms grows, so inevitably does the number of wind farms claiming constraints payments, and so, therefore, does the amount paid out in constraints payments. In 2010, just three wind farms in Scotland claimed such payments, receiving £174,128 for constraining 976MWh at an average price of £178 per MWh.

In the following year, the average price for constraints payments increased to the absurd figure of £218 per MWh, and 14 windfarms received these payments for constraining 58,708MWh. Their payments increased to £12,826,576. Fortunately the payment per MWh has declined markedly, and so far this year it averages £36 per MWh. Much less fortunately (for the bill-payers, if not for the renewable energy companies), 90 or more wind farms have been receiving constraints payments in Scotland alone since 2023, and last year (and already this year) more than 8 million Mwhs have been constrained. Thus, last year saw constraints payments of £380,004,457 paid out for wind farms in (or off the shores of) Scotland. Whether or not this year ultimately exceeds that is a moot point, but already £304,994,762 has been paid out.

Add in England and Wales, and of course the position is worse still (the number of wind farms receiving payments rises to 110 or more). Nevertheless, the big problem is caused by the fact that Scottish wind farms (both on- and off-shore) are so far from the main sources of demand, with the consequent inability of the grid to cope. Adding in England and Wales increases the average constraint payment from Scotland’s £36 to £38 per MWh. It also adds £20 million to this year’s constraints bill to date.

Even the BBC acknowledges the problem. In an article written on 9^th June 2025 (and updated on 29^th October), the facts are laid bare:

The way the system currently works means a company like Ocean Winds gets what are effectively compensation payments if the system can’t take the power its wind turbines are generating and it has to turn down its output.

It means Ocean winds was paid £72,000 not to generate power from its wind farms in the Moray Firth during a half-hour period on 3 June because the system was overloaded – one of a number of occasions output was restricted that day.

At the same time, 44 miles (70km) east of London, the Grain gas-fired power station on the Thames Estuary was paid £43,000 to provide more electricity.

Payments like that happen virtually every day. Seagreen, Scotland’s largest wind farm, was paid £65 million last year to restrict its output 71% of the time, according to analysis by Octopus Energy.

Balancing the grid in this way has already cost the country more than £500 million this year alone, the company’s analysis shows.

These figures are even higher than those supplied by the Renewable Energy Foundation – presumably because they take into account the additional costs of asking gas-fired power stations to ramp up to compensate for the grid’s inability to cope with the electricity that would be generated in remote locations were it not constrained instead. The situation gets worse still:

The total could reach almost £8bn a year by 2030, warns the National Electricity System Operator (NESO), the body in charge of the electricity network.

Depending on who you believe, constraints costs might or might not begin to fall rapidly after 2030 (with the expansion of the grid and its capacity to cope). Even NESO doesn’t seem to have great confidence about this. In its 2025 Annual Balancing Costs Report it offers two alternative visions of the future in boxes side by side at the foot of page 31 and again at the foot of page 55:

Constraint costs will fall significantly after 2030 following the delivery of network reinforcement.

Or:

Constraint costs rise again in some scenarios beyond 2030, as further generation connects to the system, which is later balanced by additional network build.

It will be good to reduce constraints payments (by significant sums ideally) but, ironically, at what cost? According to the Guardian:

Energy companies have promised to spend up to £77bn over five years to help rewire to Great Britain’s electricity infrastructure…

My cynicism may be unjustified, but as with all major infrastructure projects, my money is on the final bill being higher than “up to £77bn”. Even if I’m wrong, however, that’s still an enormous amount of money, which wouldn’t need to be spent, were it not for the building of vast numbers of renewable energy projects in far-flung locations. It’s also something over £3,000 per UK household. And that’s before we talk about the environmental cost of building the pylons, sub-stations and associated infrastructure, to which opposition is building from the far north of Scotland to the English border (and over it) and all places in-between.

This is no way to organise the UK’s electricity generation and distribution. Common sense seems to be in short supply in the administrations in both Westminster and Holyrood (and in Cardiff too, for that matter). We were promised that the grown-ups were back in charge. I’m still waiting for some evidence to support that claim.