Wind farms operators were paid £900,000 by the National Grid to disconnect their turbines for one night because the electricity was not needed.Last month, on a particularly windy night, six Scotttish wind farms were told to stop producing electricity as the National Grid was overloaded. Fair enough, you might think: if these things are producing an excess of power, then it's good to be able to regulate it.
The payments, worth up to 20 times the value of the power they would have produced, raises serious concerns about such subsidies, which are paid for by the customer.
Except that the wind farm owners need to be compensated for not producing power. Nearly a million pounds' worth of compensation. And who pays the compensation? Why, the people who didn't get the electricity that was so expensively not produced. The electricity customers.
OK, it's beyond a joke now. Can we stop?
Reminds me of the farmer in Catch-22, whose job it was to not grow alfafa. He had a long and successful career of not growing alfafa. He worked hard at it - he used to not get up at the crack of dawn so that he could not sow the fields and not mend his plough.
ReplyDeleteI don't make any electricity, and haven't done so for some time. Where do I apply?
Yup, Milo Minderbinder would have had a field day.
ReplyDeleteI must read that again, and soon. Great novel.