Wind Power and UK Energy Use

[brad465]

There have been concerns about interference with radar and also birds flying into the blades. I suspect the first has been overcome and the second was never much of a problem. I guess sabotage of transmission cables might become an issue for offshore wind.

Yes while bird strikes will be an issue, they are also an issue with fossil fuel power sources if birds fly over cooling towers/chimneys and heavy industry equivalents. Sabotage certainly is an issue, but then so are any transmission cables moving any other form of power, including most especially interconnectors. There's also safety in numbers; the more cables and offshore wind sites, the more that has to be done to take out a significant chunk of the grid, and the more one's cover is likely to be blown doing the sabotage.

 

[hwl]

A couple of thoughts of pricing:
1. there has been quite a bit of cost inflation, so no surprises
2. interest rates have risen and fallen slightly so power modes with long construction times and /or high fuel and maintenance cost in uses have seen comparatively bigger increases in nominal auction price hence the hypothetical* new gas price mentioned in the BBC article being so high

*no one would bother in practice as there is more than enough existing gas assets...

 

[Bald Rick]

no one would bother in practice as there is more than enough existing gas assets...

although there is a new gas power ststion being built somewhere (I forget where), but immediately adjacent to a big battery storage system.

 

[hwl]

although there is a new gas power station being built somewhere (I forget where), but immediately adjacent to a big battery storage system.

Statera in Thurrock?
This is a highly specialised balancing facility rather than more conventional generation.

It isn't a conventional gas turbine power plant operation, the plan (if fully built...) is 98x reciprocating gas engines - reaching full power from cold start about 5x fast than CCGT (and several parts of the CCGT plant won't thank you for ramping up that fast but these gas engines will be fine with 5x faster)
Now that the central core equipment and grid connection (275kV) is live (late last summer), the capacity gets added incrementally as each new gas engine is delivered and connected. The aim will be to have enough engines on at any point to have them operating between ~55% - 100% load for balancing and optimised gas consumption and the batteries should allow this optimum efficiency to happen.
The gas engines are Jenbacher 624 (hydrogen capable, though this is unlikely to every be used), and are effectively the V24 big brothers of the V16 engines in the Class 70 locomotives.

In terms of build cash flow and quickly adding new capacity once the core infrastructure is delivered it is quite similar to wind farms compared to traditional large CCGTs. All the CCGTs in recent-ish time have tended to be much smaller with much quicker build and start of pay back times (but lower efficiency).

The timing of Statera coming online (and it role and location) may well have helped with more wind not having to be curtailed recently.

 

[Trainbike46]

How do prices compare to current prices we pay, how much will be needed to connect these into the grid (on top of what is already budgeted) and/or provide battery backup so the turbines turn as much as possible?
For me UK has 2 issues: 1 energy security where this obviously helps and 2: very high cost of energy

To give a more detailed response to this: The Guardian did an analysis on the likely savings to consumers, in summary:

- The average price at this auction was £90.91/MWh in 2024 prices for 20 year contracts
- Half the current nuclear and gas fleet is expected to retire by 2035, so more electricity and storage capacity is urgently needed.
- New gas would cost around £147/MWh
- To be price neutral with current costs, auction prices had to be around £94-95/MWh or lower

So these contracts are likely to slightly reduce electricity prices, and are significantly cheaper than other options. There are also upcoming results from the onshore wind and solar auction, which is expected to deliver lower prices compared to this auction.

 

[JamesT]

To give a more detailed response to this: The Guardian did an analysis on the likely savings to consumers, in summary:

- The average price at this auction was £90.91/MWh in 2024 prices for 20 year contracts
- Half the current nuclear and gas fleet is expected to retire by 2035, so more electricity and storage capacity is urgently needed.
- New gas would cost around £147/MWh
- To be price neutral with current costs, auction prices had to be around £94-95/MWh or lower

So these contracts are likely to slightly reduce electricity prices, and are significantly cheaper than other options. There are also upcoming results from the onshore wind and solar auction, which is expected to deliver lower prices compared to this auction.

I'm not sure how £94/MWh is price neutral with current costs, when it says the current price is £74/MWh. Can someone explain how that works?

 

[CdBrux]

Also it's presumably £90.91 when operating, i.e. windy enough. How are costs such as providing battery backup and providing an alternate energy source backup counted for when comparing off-shore wind costs vs other means to constantly supply the countries energy needs?

 

[Trainbike46]

I'm not sure how £94/MWh is price neutral with current costs, when it says the current price is £74/MWh. Can someone explain how that works?

From the article I quoted:

The current market price for electricity bought in advance is about £74/MWh, suggesting bill-payers would have to offer top-ups to developers to match the strike price if they began operating today. However, analysis by Aurora Energy Research and the consultancy Baringa found that an increase in renewable energy today would lower the future wholesale price – more than offsetting the impact of higher levies to support renewable energy and “keeping household energy bills effectively neutral through to 2035”.

So basically, yes there would be some top-up payments to these projects, but the reducing effect these projects will have on the wholesale price mean that consumers get cheaper electricity overall.

 

[JamesT]

From the article I quoted:

I read that, it still doesn't make any sense. If we do more renewables now, that will lower prices compared to today, but we've locked in a higher price for these future renewables, so how are they lowering the price?

 

[Trainbike46]

I read that, it still doesn't make any sense. If we do more renewables now, that will lower prices compared to today, but we've locked in a higher price for these future renewables, so how are they lowering the price?

The renewables supply their production to the grid. This lowers the wholesale electricity price for all generators that contribute. This includes operators with CfD agreements (like these new ones), operators with subsidy agreements from before the CfD scheme, and operators without any subsidy agreements.

The operators with a CfD contract then get the difference between the market price and their strike price paid from a levy on consumer bills.

The consumer bills consist of multiple elements:
- The wholesale electricity price
- The cost of moving electricity to consumers
- The cost of the CfD contracts
- Various other elements including supplier profits

The reduced wholesale price lowers consumer bills. The CfD payments increase consumer bills. At a strike price of £94-95/MWh, these elements cancel each other out. If the strike price is lower, like the £90.91/MWh average agreed in this auction, the effect of wholesale price reduction is stronger, lowering consumer bills overall.

It is also protects against future price volatility like the one experienced in 2022.

 

[Bald Rick]

Statera in Thurrock?

Yes that’s it I think, thank you.

 

[hwl]

The renewables supply their production to the grid. This lowers the wholesale electricity price for all generators that contribute. This includes operators with CfD agreements (like these new ones), operators with subsidy agreements from before the CfD scheme, and operators without any subsidy agreements.

The operators with a CfD contract then get the difference between the market price and their strike price paid from a levy on consumer bills.

The consumer bills consist of multiple elements:
- The wholesale electricity price
- The cost of moving electricity to consumers
- The cost of the CfD contracts
- Various other elements including supplier profits

The reduced wholesale price lowers consumer bills. The CfD payments increase consumer bills. At a strike price of £94-95/MWh, these elements cancel each other out. If the strike price is lower, like the £90.91/MWh average agreed in this auction, the effect of wholesale price reduction is stronger, lowering consumer bills overall.

It is also protects against future price volatility like the one experienced in 2022.

It is worth mentioning that only about half of future generation (but significantly more of the installed capacity due to lower utilisation of wind and solar assets) will be though CfD mechanisms.

The mechanism covers the first 20 years but the generating assets lives are longer and should have been full paid for by 15-17 years so the theory is that wholesale prices beyond 20 should be competitively low for end users. (This isn't included in any of the analsys seen in the newspaper articles.)

 

[jon0844]

It is worth mentioning that only about half of future generation (but significantly more of the installed capacity due to lower utilisation of wind and solar assets) will be though CfD mechanisms.

The mechanism covers the first 20 years but the generating assets lives are longer and should have been full paid for by 15-17 years so the theory is that wholesale prices beyond 20 should be competitively low for end users. (This isn't included in any of the analsys seen in the newspaper articles.)

I know it is being talked about, but I don't see it being discussed very often and do not know how it is being considered in the industry, but as more and more people invest in home solar and batteries (and if the Government brings in new grants, that could massively increase the installations) and possibly plug-in solar becomes a thing, that will have a big impact on the state of the grid.. not least being able to take power in the day, but also more power being used overnight to charge batteries instead of power being used in the day.

Also, V2G is still very early days and not being talked about much either (beyond some moves by Octopus in the last year or so) and as more cars come with this supported and compatible 'chargers' are installed in homes and industry, the huge amount of battery storage sitting on driveways has to be considered too.

Clearly it's harder to predict how this will change things because while huge investments in the grid, mass battery storage, wind farms and solar are big projects that can be accounted for years in advance - nobody knows what the uptake will be for home batteries and EVs.

My assumption is that with suitable grants and planning requirements for new builds, plus the inevitability of EVs becoming the norm, this will play a huge role even if Joe Public are likely mostly unaware of its potential (especially if they see the negative stories on social media from the industries that are effectively going to become obsolete).

 

[HSTEd]

Are there any hidden problems that might damage trust in offshore wind (other than wind not blowing all the time)? Nuclear had setbacks from Chernobyl and Fukushima, and while they were as a result of issues not seen in the other 99% of nuclear power plants, they had significant impact on nuclear power deployment.

The British industry actually weathered Chernobyl pretty well in public acceptance terms.
The real killer was rising capital costs combined with the high capital discount rates seen in the industry post privatisation.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 16 Jan 2026 ==

*no one would bother in practice as there is more than enough existing gas assets...

We now have open cycle turbines approaching the efficiency to the first generation combined cycle plants that make up the bulk of UK capacity. They've reached 43% or so.

Replacing those first gen plants would be highly attractive as capacity factors fall because you can shed a lot of maintenance costs.

 

[Bald Rick]

nobody knows what the uptake will be for home batteries and EVs.

There’s some pretty good forecasts though. About 20% of the 3.6GW increase in solar capacity last year was domestic small scale (usually rooftops), and the number of battery installations is being tracked too. Same for EVs, the way the buying market is responding to their supply is fairly well understood. Of course forecasts are usually wrong, but it is the margin of error that matters.

 

[hwl]

There’s some pretty good forecasts though. About 20% of the 3.6GW increase in solar capacity last year was domestic small scale (usually rooftops), and the number of battery installations is being tracked too. Same for EVs, the way the buying market is responding to their supply is fairly well understood. Of course forecasts are usually wrong, but it is the margin of error that matters.

Battery - Forecasts will hold till some of the big technology changes happen at which point there is likely to be some big (good) changes in market behaviour, at the moment battery uptake (vehicles lower, storage forecasts a bit more variable but generally outperforming expectation) There will be some fairly big pivots in forecast trajectories when battery key technologies hit the market in reasonable production volumes with much lower cell damage per cycle:
a) for stationery storage - sodium ion, far cheaper and easier to use (lower cooling requirements, better extreme temperature performance and far far less likely to self combust). The substantially lower cost of ownership over the long life will drive substantial uptake for both domestic and battery farm storage and if correctly located reduce wind (and solar) curtailment.
b) for vehicles, there is likely to be a split with small (cheap) city cars going down the low cost, low degradation Sodium route. The much better total cycle life may help with users having confidence to use them a pseudo storage. for the mid-high end EV market Solid State (likely to take longer to get to market than Sodium) will also have substantial battery cycle life giving home users the confidence to use them for storage (especially if at home for winter evening peaks)
There will be a bit of a psychological lag till users develop confidence in the products long cycle lives before usage really takes off for vehicle storage use.

 

[Bald Rick]

In other news, and related to the railway too, Plannign consent has been granted for a 500MW / 4GWh Battery facility at Sundon, Bedfordshire. This is rather handy for the Grid, and within sight of Sundon feeder station on the MML. It’s also next to a solar farm inder construction.

This would be, I think, the biggest battery in terms of energy storage in the country, by a long way. It’s only a bit less than half of the energy capacity of Dinorwig Pumped Storage.


All the details on these websites, which for obvious reasons are too much to quote (my summary above is the headlines).

Statera Energy secures planning approval for 500MW Sundon battery storage to power 540,000 homes

stateraenergy.co.uk

Sundon Storage

sundonbess.co.uk

 

[hwl]

In other news, and related to the railway too, Planning consent has been granted for a 500MW / 4GWh Battery facility at Sundon, Bedfordshire. This is rather handy for the Grid, and within sight of Sundon feeder station on the MML. It’s also next to a solar farm inder construction.

This would be, I think, the biggest battery in terms of energy storage in the country, by a long way. It’s only a bit less than half of the energy capacity of Dinorwig Pumped Storage.


All the details on these websites, which for obvious reasons are too much to quote (my summary above is the headlines).

Statera Energy secures planning approval for 500MW Sundon battery storage to power 540,000 homes

stateraenergy.co.uk

Sundon Storage

sundonbess.co.uk

That is pretty well located on all fronts (unlike quite few so far), the aim appears to be battery near end users to cover morning and evening before / after during the daytime solar potential (that happens to be located next to solar) with the ability to charge with plenty of "surplus" wind over night especially after grid upgrades in the next few years.

Lots of battery so far has focused on being near generation and upstream of grid bottlenecks which somewhat limits the usefulness of the battery installations, the other side of the picture that has been relatively small in capacity terms so far but appears to be ramping up is more large scale battery near end users, and much for of this will be needed in future years as parts of the grid will be running at fairly high capacity lots of the time and battery (if has good cycle life) will be far cheaper than marginal extra capacity only used intensively for short periods.

And this being near Sundon might be good for a bit of phase imbalance correction.

 

[Trainbike46]

There is an interview with the CEO of SSE in the times, talking about the need to replace older power stations in the UK (both gas and nuclear) and arguing that renewables are the way to do that.

Key quote:

“If you take rising demand and reducing generation capacity because of age, you’re going to need to build something,” says Pibworth. “So then you have a choice: you can build gas generation or you can build renewables. You could build nuclear, but it’s on longer time scales. We would argue very strongly from everything that we can see that renewables are the cheaper option than gas generation.”

It also highlights the increasing cost of building gas power stations:

And while wind farms are becoming more expensive to build, so too are gas plants. He offers a startling example to make his point: the last gas plant built by SSE, Keadby 2 in Lincolnshire, opened in 2023 and cost £350 million after five years of development. It would cost “three and a half times that number” today, he says — because of higher costs in the supply chain.
“So a debate concentrating on just the increased cost of renewables, without taking account of the increased cost of all technologies, is probably not particularly balanced,” he adds.

 

[hwl]

There is an interview with the CEO of SSE in the times, talking about the need to replace older power stations in the UK (both gas and nuclear) and arguing that renewables are the way to do that.

Key quote:

It also highlights the increasing cost of building gas power stations:

This sounds like a robust response to a Telegraph article last week based on a report by a consultancy (who get plenty of revenue from advising on gas plant renewals) bemoaning that there wasn't a strategic plan for maintaining existing gas plants coming up to major overhaul windows that might result in the demand constraints or the lights going off.
The reality is that many gas plants have been accruing operating hours far more slowing and often at lower average loads which may well have (and will) defer the need for major maintenance somewhat. We will see alot of gas plant operators carefully nurse some plants for the next 5-10 years at comparatively low operating hours per year compared to what the plants used to do.
Needless to say the rising cost of gas overhauls (non just new build) wasn't raised...

 

[HSTEd]

That is pretty well located on all fronts (unlike quite few so far), the aim appears to be battery near end users to cover morning and evening before / after during the daytime solar potential (that happens to be located next to solar) with the ability to charge with plenty of "surplus" wind over night especially after grid upgrades in the next few years.

Lots of battery so far has focused on being near generation and upstream of grid bottlenecks which somewhat limits the usefulness of the battery installations, the other side of the picture that has been relatively small in capacity terms so far but appears to be ramping up is more large scale battery near end users, and much for of this will be needed in future years as parts of the grid will be running at fairly high capacity lots of the time and battery (if has good cycle life) will be far cheaper than marginal extra capacity only used intensively for short periods.

And this being near Sundon might be good for a bit of phase imbalance correction.

It would also be exceptionally useful in providing instantaneous reserve in case the circuits across the Scottish borders trip.

That may allow the grid operator to be more aggressive in how the cross border circuits are operated. The n-1 criterion can be somewhat relaxed when this battery is available, except when it is already discharging of course!

 

[hwl]

It would also be exceptionally useful in providing instantaneous reserve in case the circuits across the Scottish borders trip.

With the quantity of battery going in Scotland they could be pretty aggressive if battery can preform like a pseudo rotating mass at "both ends" but the comparative lack of battery going in so far near big demand centre has been the puzzle for me, but it is now starting to happen in earnest.

That may allow the grid operator to be more aggressive in how the cross border circuits are operated. The n-1 criterion can be somewhat relaxed when this battery is available, except when it is already discharging of course!

Given the quantity of battery going in and where, I'm not sure how much is going to be maxed out at the generation end that often and especially when it matters - thus allowing a reasonable bit of headroom most of the time and certainly long enough for pumped storage to come on line.

 

[Bald Rick]

I might be wrong, but I think the instantaneous wind power record has just been raised this morning.

 

[edwin_m]

I might be wrong, but I think the instantaneous wind power record has just been raised this morning.

Was it blown away?

 

[Nottingham59]

I might be wrong, but I think the instantaneous wind power record has just been raised this morning.

Differnt sources give different figures for wind generation, but the excellent https://grid.iamkate.com/ suggests wind power peaked at 22.86GW at 7:30am. The same page says the current record is 23.94GW and I would hope that those two measures are consistent with each other. So not today.

 

[brad465]

Differnt sources give different figures for wind generation, but the excellent https://grid.iamkate.com/ suggests wind power peaked at 22.86GW at 7:30am. The same page says the current record is 23.94GW and I would hope that those two measures are consistent with each other. So not today.

Despite nearly 23GW of wind power currently, the wholesale price is over £100 with gas at around 12GW generation. Is there a particular reason why, despite the fact abolishing this would be extremely popular, the price has to be pegged to the most expensive form of generation, which is currently gas?

 

[Trainbike46]

Despite nearly 23GW of wind power currently, the wholesale price is over £100 with gas at around 12GW generation. Is there a particular reason why, despite the fact abolishing this would be extremely popular, the price has to be pegged to the most expensive form of generation, which is currently gas?

I believe there was some kind of assessment into changing the market but it was decided against as too risky. Not entirely sure what options they considered in the end.

The reason it was considered too risky was that changing the rules of the market would change the economics of all power generation proposals, and doing that was feared would shake investor confidence.

So I did a quick search and in the end they did decide on some reforms, but not any of the major changes that were considered:

Government sets out reforms to create a fair, secure, affordable and efficient electricity system

Government confirms reforms to the national pricing electricity market that will create a fairer, cheaper, more secure, and more efficient energy system.

www.gov.uk

 

[quantinghome]

Despite nearly 23GW of wind power currently, the wholesale price is over £100 with gas at around 12GW generation. Is there a particular reason why, despite the fact abolishing this would be extremely popular, the price has to be pegged to the most expensive form of generation, which is currently gas?

It's the fundamental economics of supply and demand. The price is set at the margin. It's true for any commodity sold in a competitive market.

You would probably need to move back to a CEGB style set-up if you wanted a "cost plus" model. I can't see how you could do that while keeping generation in the private sector. And it would be hugely expensive to buy them out.

 

[Bald Rick]

Despite nearly 23GW of wind power currently, the wholesale price is over £100 with gas at around 12GW generation. Is there a particular reason why, despite the fact abolishing this would be extremely popular, the price has to be pegged to the most expensive form of generation, which is currently gas?

That’s the marginal price as others have said. The good news is that any generators on contracts for difference will be being paid the price set in their contract (adjusted for inflation). For example the Sofia windfarm will have been pumping out well over 1GW at a CFD price of £39.65 per MWh (2012 prices, current prices £60-£70). The generators then pay back the extra to Government.

 

[HSTEd]

Despite nearly 23GW of wind power currently, the wholesale price is over £100 with gas at around 12GW generation. Is there a particular reason why, despite the fact abolishing this would be extremely popular, the price has to be pegged to the most expensive form of generation, which is currently gas?

Because the electricity market system introduced at privatisation requires that all players be paid the price paid to the most expensive generator ordered to generate.

Otherwise you would incentivise for people to hold back generation until the last possible moment to obtain higher prices from a desperate grid operator.

If you want to keep the privatised system, this is a fundamental feature of it. Although I expect Ofgem will keep trying to think up wheezes to avoid this, I do not expect them to succeed

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 27 Jan 2026 ==

You would probably need to move back to a CEGB style set-up if you wanted a "cost plus" model. I can't see how you could do that while keeping generation in the private sector. And it would be hugely expensive to buy them out.

I think you could impose a grouping style solution to produce a quasi CEGB without huge capital cost. But that's about all I've got.