You couldn’t make it up. From the Herald
CALLS have been made for the UK Government to close an “embarrassing” loophole that allows some wind-farm operators to name their own price as compensation for not operating.The issue has been raised by the regulator Ofgem, but the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) confirmed the loophole exists but will not name the exempted companies.The revelation will intensify criticism of a system that effectively makes consumers pay millions for generators not to generate.
A plethora of wind farms has been allowed to start feeding the national grid before it was ready to deal with the extra power.Some firms with wind farms of 100 megawatts or less are benefiting from the administrative oversight, leaving taxpayers to foot the bill.Dr Lee Moroney of the Renewable Energy Foundation said: “Ever since constraint payments to wind farms first began in 2011 there has been concern that the prices demanded were unreasonably high, and Ofgem actually introduced regulations to protect the consumer.”She said it also meant wind farms with licence exemption were also exempted from the regulations controlling constraint prices. Dr Moroney added: “In effect, these wind farms can safely continue to name their price for not generating.
Read the rest, once you’ve made a nice cup of tea to calm down with.
Tallbloke's Talkshop 
The skills of the Government’s Legislation Drafting Advisors were obviously much lower than those of the Wind Farm Operators’ negotiators.
it highlights the missing link in the wind energy business: power storage. It could be cheaper to buy batteries (for example) than to pay the compensation for not operating.
There are other ways of storing renewable power but cost is obviously an issue.
http://esciencenews.com/articles/2013/05/20/not.just.blowing.wind.compressing.air.renewable.energy.storage
Here’s another blood-pressure raiser…
‘Some of Britain’s biggest energy suppliers were holding back gas in storage tanks at a time when the market ran into an acute shortage two months ago, triggering a doubling of wholesale prices’
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2013/may/24/energy-suppliers-held-back-gas-uk
oldbrew said “it highlights the missing link in the wind energy business: power storage.”
Shouldn’t that read: “it highlights the missing link in the wind energy business: Integrity?”
@ Oldbrew 11:53
Don’t believe everything you read in the Guardian.
Their article states “The revelations came after claims the UK was within six hours of running out of gas completely on 22 March”
To which I respond Bullshit.
“Linepack” i.e. the quantity of gas actually stored in the pipes of the National Transmission System during its distribution to consumers is 1 – 2 day’s worth.
http://www.nationalgrid.com/uk/Gas/OperationalInfo/operationaldocuments/linepack/
THis is not new – but nothing getting done about it…….. ” Just like the JS affair”, etc Questioningthe High and Mighty is a waste of time – frequently told to accept it and get on with your life….. ahum ! do I need to add more ?
Name and shame should be the modus operandi here.
Just who is making money for not producing power, while pensioners die of hypothermia?
Does FOIA legislation cover these parasites?
I intend to find out.
@ Joe Public
Sky News reported the same, and here’s the quote from the Crown Estate:
Rob Hastings, energy and infrastructure director at the Crown Estate, was reported by the Financial Times as saying: “We really only had six hours’ worth of gas left in storage as a buffer.”
http://news.sky.com/story/1095134/gas-uk-was-six-hours-from-running-out
johng above,
Grin, uh huh.
I could go way further on what is sensible for wind generation, incuding whether generating electricity is a sensible usage anyway: there has been an obsession with electricity ever since it was discovered where in reality there might be better system uses for erratic mechanical energy.
The stupidity and it is takes one example, payment to not produce instead of using the product to do something useful.
@ oldbrew 2:29
When Storage runs out completely, we’re left with Line Pack. 1 – 2 day’s worth.
The Guardian & Sky News misunderstand the reality of our Natural Gas Transmission System.
The EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) used to pay farmers to not produce food. (Perhaps they still do).
This doesn’t really seem much different.
An answer is trivial so I ask why it has not been done.
Take a power hungry intermittent capable process close to the wind farm. Connect. There is no charge for the electricity with the payback to not having to pay for stopping generation.
The only people hurt are the pockets of the wind farm owners… who ought to be providing.
Forget it, this is the kind of idea which gets right up the noses of the people involved so it won’t happen. Give away a commodity… you are kidding? Nope.
(I saw this news item a few days ago but the difference between me and Rog is he can do the right kind of writing)
Wind power: a failed 19th century solution to 21st century problems.
We have now had 5 years to learn the vagaries of green energy and its destructive affects on prices, supply, availability, the landscape, and grid stability. Subsidies and mandates are in themselves harmful enough but constraint payments are an additional “incentive” to add “renewables” which deserves more scrutiny.
Constraint payments have rarely been audited. In the few instances it has been done, the rate paid to the worthless wind turbine owner was found to be about 4 times the going rate.
We also know that wind turbines don’t produce electricity when there is too much wind, or too little wind, and they are not useful at peak hours when the grid cannot take the additional supply. Which conditions existed for a wind turbine when constraint payments were accepted? There is no accountability in the system at all. To track the reason for constraint payments – the wind supply and the rates paid back to the worthless wind turbine owners – would require an entire new layer of clerks and yet another bureaucracy. It is by definition a totally destabilizing and unaccountable system.
People who are ignoring the devastating effects of these wind turbines and urging further pursuit of “renewable” energy are now advancing an irrational and religious cause, because observations clearly reveal that this is a waste and brings ruin. Constraint payments to worthless wind turbines are taken from electricity users and transferred to a green aristocracy.
“I call wind power and solar power Störgrössen (disturbance sources), not energy sources.
When you think about it, this is applied discordianism; the goddess of Discordia wants to destroy what works; and which political movements want to destroy industries that work…”
~DirkH
Constraint payments take money from the providers and users of genuine coal and gas power plants and transfers it to a green aristocracy. Or is it Eris-tocracy?
Could I be paid for the guns I am not producing, please? I have not produced thousands, even millions. Not any. What is more, there is a longish list of items I am not producing either, therefore I’d definitely deserve a fat compensation.
Nice business plan, is it not? Now, can I have my loan with government bank guarantee? I promise I would spend generously, to help the poor, of course, by generating jobs in services they may provide to me, for such a benevolent fellow I am.
The grid is being blamed for not being ready to carry the surges of surplus wind produced electricity to England. But it is very questionable if the investment in reinforcing the grid for this purpose would be cost effective. As the wind farm outputs increase in the mad dash for subsidies the problem of surplus electricity will increase. England too is getting covered in windmills and they are likely to be producing surplus at the same time and doubtless would like to export it north! In the end Adam Smith will win and the true price of surplus product that can’t be stored will be revealed – £zero! But the grid will be compelled by politicians to pay wind farmers not to produce ever more frequently as more windmills come on stream and the problem escalates. Crackers!
So, the government has decided to rent some very large ornaments, or works of art, scatter them over some of the best countryside and we pay over the odds whatever they do.
So for the AGW faithful, the moral hazard of having windmill operators name their own tax payer subsidy for when the wind does not blow, along with a subsidy for when the wind does blow, and no obligation to pay for the offset power when the wind fails to blow or blows to hard, is OK.
Meanwhile, the AGW faithful demand the ‘fossil fuel industry’ is to develop carbon capture on its own as a price of staying in business, with no public support.
Our climate concerned seem to have lost their concern for the tax payer, the power user, financial common sense and physical reality.
All in the name, they keep telling us, of saving Earth from CO2.
According to one of the linked Scottish Herald reports:
‘During the same time period [April 13 to May 13], Longannet coal-fired power station and Peterhead gas-fired power stations were paid more than £4.4m in constraint payments.’
So the whole system seems a bit bizarre?
Britons are collectively best described by the American slang term: suckahs!
(Britons = the British, above. Sloppy usage, I know.)