More cash for wind farms near towns as net zero shift stretches grid
By Paul Homewood
h/t Philip Bratby
Developers are to be handed more cash to erect wind turbines and solar farms near towns and cities in a bid to get more power generation near to where it is needed.
Renewable energy companies will be allowed to charge customers more for their power if they generate it close to where it is needed, rather than in sparsely populated parts of the country.
The scheme, to be formally announced on Tuesday by Claire Coutinho, the Energy Secretary, is designed to trigger a rush to build wind and solar infrastructure on farmland around cities.
However, the policy is also likely to prove highly controversial with environment groups because of the likely impact on treasured landscapes.
The Government will introduce zonal pricing, with generators paid different rates according to the distance between their assets and consumers.
The UK will be divided into about half a dozen generating zones so that onshore wind and solar farms in the Home Counties could be paid more for their power than those in Scotland, for example.
Research by Ofgem suggests that making electricity prices higher in the South East, where demand is strongest and supply weakest, would incentivise solar developers.
They would be encouraged to buy up swathes of farmland in a region stretching from London to Bristol and up to Norwich and Cambridge for solar parks and wind farms.
Ofgem has calculated that 20 gigawatts of solar power generation is needed in southern England. Solar farms need up to 4,000 acres of land for each gigawatt, implying 60 million industrial solar panels need to be spread across an area equivalent to 40,000 football pitches.
The Campaign for the Protection of Rural England has warned that such a plan could mean many tenant farmers being thrown off their land, greater pressure on the green belt, and rural landscapes altered forever.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/03/10/wind-solar-farms-south-england-charge-more-energy/
The government claims this will reduce bills, but this is just another of the lies about Net Zero. How enabling renewable energy companies to charge customers more will cut bills is a mystery.
But more to the point, why would we want to trash the countryside by covering it with hundreds of thousands of acres of solar panels, when they produce next to nothing in winter months, the time when demand for power is at its highest?
Yesterday for instance, solar generation only ran at 7% of capacity. Today it only reached a pitiful 1.96 GW for a few minutes.
https://www.solar.sheffield.ac.uk/pvlive/#
In January it was much lower, just 3%.
And, of course, we get nothing from them at all for 18 hours a day in midwinter.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
The Tories seem to have a death wish. Why are they alienating the last of their supporters? They might as well become another Green Party.
It still seems like a massive step but could they really drive voters to Reform in such numbers that they win a lot of seats given that despite the drivel from the legacy media there is NO big swing to Labour in the byelections? The budget was a total failure that can only leave you wondering if they have another one lined up for late summer but will the leftie incompetent OBR deliberately torpedo any proposals for growth? Amazing how we are still suffering from the incompetent Osborne’s period as chancellor as he created the OBR but more than that he was stupid enough to issue government debt that had a payback linked to inflation as the moron thought it would never rise.
The “Tories” committed suicide on 28/11/1990.
Took me while! Indeed, shall we ever see her like again? Plenty more Coutinhos though probably.
The only Prime Minister with a science degree, Salisbury had a maths degree and Gladstone and Peel degrees in classics and maths. Good pub quiz question!
As with the EU, a lot of Tory MPs have convinced themselves that those who oppose Net Zero are just fringe nutters who should be ignored. I suspect a lot of them are sure we will all come around in the end because Labour will supposedly be worse. They should look France to see what happens when a traditional right-wing party neglects its base.
Maybe one day, when it’s far too late to change course, they will discover they are/were themselves the fringe nutters.
Nothing counts more than votes. They believe the polls which tell them the majority of the country they have brainwashed is behind them and it will be a popular policy. https://britain.unherd.com/net-zero/
Like the Irish, they are totally out of touch with reality. The Tories are toast and, whilst perhaps not ideal, Nigel Farage will lead Reform into the next GE and our only chance of getting out of this mess is to vote for them.
Trump has declared a manifesto for Nov 2024 which includes “We will again get out of Paris” and “we are going to put thousands of Americans to work building the power plants, pipelines, grids, ports, refineries, and shipping terminals of tomorrow.”
https://www.donaldjtrump.com/agenda47/agenda47-president-trump-on-making-america-energy-independent-again
We know Farage and Trump operate on similar political principles, and there’s a populist uprising across Europe just waiting for inspiration.
Even if we have to hold our nose to vote for Farage we no longer have any choice.
Nigel Farage has been referred to as the most succesful politician of the last 50 years – he did after all achieve his original stated aims 100%.
I don’t feel the need to “hold my nose” to vote for successful people particularly when I agree with their aims.
@Ray Sanders
Nor do I, but there are some amongst us who would have to hold their nose.
Another point about EV panels is the land they take out of food production. The landowners will doubtless be getting a higher return than from arable or livestock farming so perhaps you can’t blame them? The rest of us have to subsidise the ghastly eyesores which turn the countryside from green to black. It will prove to be an environmental disaster. The few are getting richer off the backs of those just managing. It’s blatant exploitation masquerading as green energy.
I know not all farmers are happy. In fact many are very unhappy about it all.
DC…it’s why I call solar-farms, solar-ex-farms. They’re currently building one near me with plans for a monster 159-acre near-by along the Fosse Way. It hurts to think of the smaller sized gas power-station with a greater output per 24-hour day that could more easily have been built on the site! The mind boggles!
There’s one being built straddling the A617 near Farnsfield.
Yes. they are not farms but industrial installations. As such the land they occupy must be reclassified as industrial land. Of course these solar industrial sites get an @ annual subsidy of £1000/acre from Govt and when they collapse after 20yrs they can claim its now a ‘brown field site’ and build houses. Great wheeze.
Thanks Paul! ”Net zero” MUST be scrapped, urgently! I guess Reform will be the only way that this can be done democratically! How quickly can they ensure that the Green Blob can be removed?
Why grow potatoes and cabbage, when you can grow electricity (a few hours a day)?
PV solar for grid-level generation: Who’s idea was that? Does he still have a job?
I know you’ve said it, as I have too. Like building houses ’n factories on Greenfield sites, like disrupting the countryside for HS2, etc etc like digging big No-Go trench bands for power & Gas (only to later eg especially in my time now, “Cancelling GAS” …. all that plastic pipe wasting underground. ..) & More over hill and Dale,
But who eats so much tatties and cabbage with LOW Carbon footprints? Naww, “they” prefer the avocadoes and Rice or other pasta best stuff from far flung places. Surprises me too that so many folk seem to risk Life n Limb in rubber boats to come here to eat Bangers n Mash with Cabbage or Neeps
saighdear, I live in Kent, close to the coast. I can see France from a short walk from home. It always amazes me that so many people are willing to risk DEATH to come here.
Ha! Ray, I live at the foot of some hills, If I climb ( or take the tractor ) I can see Heaven! Sadly, the Eco loons have spoilt the view, and like you, I cannot understand why so many want to come up here where it is really COLD these past few days with very little Sunshine.
They are getting desperate. There was a study recently that National Grid would need many hundreds (or was it thousands?) of miles of new transmission lines to get the electricity from far-flung wind farms to the customers in the centres of population. The penny seems to have dropped that this can’t be magicked up quickly enough. This illustrates the lunacy of carpeting Caithness in the far north of Scotland and even far-offshore Shetland with wind farm eyesores.
The National Grid/DNOs will also have to rewire every street in the country if we are to charge our EVs and power our heat pumps. Now that will probably take more 50 years and many £trillions if HS2 is any thing to go by.
Money we don’t have
To pay a workforce that doesn’t exist
To install equipment that we’ll need to import
Made from metals and minerals that probably don’t exist
All insulated will plastics made from oil
You really couldn’t make this stuff up
We are governed by fools
Several years ago it was estimated the cost would be at least £60bn. Now a much deal more.
https://v2g.co.uk/2021/05/electric-vehicles-as-energy-smart-appliances/
Discussion between a representative of v2g and a Dr of Engineering at Southampton University
Well said!!
April 1st would be appropriate date to announce this. Another mad scheme to f*ck up the country. Coutinho, as expected, is technically illiterate on electricity generation and distribution. Ofgem are a useless regulator, everything they get involved with is guaranteed to be a disaster, they once looked after consumers, by ensuring electricity companies were not colluding in price fixing. Now they are proposing to increase prices for local renewables!
The terms of Ofgem were changed so that they became activists for unreliable expensive generation and sod the consumers. Very rarely do you hear anything in the legacy media about why our electricity is so expensive and why it will never become cheaper despite the lies peddled by Sushi’s little bimbo Coutinho.
Jonathan Brearley is CEO of OFGEM, He was a civil servant in the Department of Energy and Climate Change and worked on the climate change act with Baroness Worthington. Putting a green loony in charge of OFGEM is like putting the fox in charge of the chickens!!
Indeed. Our Electricity is the second most expensive in Europe (33 countries)
It’s the second most expensive in the world actually!
Ofgem have been given a net zero mandate following which Brearly said
“The net zero mandate…..underlines that net zero is the best option not only from a climate perspective, but to ensure a low cost energy future”
Ofgem’s net zero mandate “sends a clear message we must end our historic dependency on fossil fuels”
You can’t fix stupid!
“Research by Ofgem suggests that making electricity prices higher in the South East, where demand is strongest and supply weakest, would incentivise solar developers.“
“Ofgem has calculated that 20 gigawatts of solar power generation is needed in southern England.“
Is Ofgem occupied with raving morons? Solar power in winter!!!!!!!!!!!!!
On OFGEM’s performance over the last few years, the answer to your question is “YES”
In 2022 a non executive director resigned in protest at OFGEM favouring suppliers rather than customers. From the Guardian,
A director at energy regulator Ofgem has resigned, accusing it of favouring businesses over consumers with a rule change that will add as much as £400 to the average UK household energy bill.
Christine Farnish, a non-executive member of the Gas and Electricity Markets Authority (Gema), Ofgem’s board, tendered her resignation to the business secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, in early August.
Farnish said the regulator “gave too much benefit to companies at the expense of consumers”, according to a leaked internal Ofgem announcement. Across the UK’s 27m retail energy customers a £400 annual bills increase could cost households more than £10bn.
Corruption rules, OK?
The entire solar capacity of the UK produced over the 121 days from 1st Nov 2023 to 29th Feb 2024 an estimated 1,595GWh. This represents less than 1% of current levels of consumption over that period. Does the entity known as Ofgem have a brain?
NO
Let’s not forget that the level of atmospheric carbon dioxide does not matter
As long as it doesn’t fall!
more cash to erect wind turbines and solar farms near towns and cities
…where it’s likely to be a good deal less windy than hills and moorlands well away from urban areas.
The more that are built the more 18 hour gaps there are to fill….by how??
Intensive generation is always going to be better than extensive generation. Any policy that encourages the latter is only going to make electricity more expensive.
Couthino shouldn’t be anywhere near DESNZ – she has zero competence in Energy and zero understanding that the general public don’t want these inept, engineeringly incompetent, bill increasing wind & solar farms – technologically, they are to power generation what the square wheel is to bicycles
The public want three things in terms of electricity - that it is safe, on demand and as cheap as possible.
If they can have test, then most will say sure, be as Green as possible. But instead we are focused entirely on the marginal need.
Here’s what is coming already courtesy of AR5:
Mouseover version with details:
https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/N76ms/3/
The thing is solar has a very low average capacity factor – perhaps 14% is a really good SW site, but there are good reasons why no-one is building one around rainy Manchester. However, in May and June sunny days lead to peak output that becomes a nightmare for the grid to handle. That will require expensive solutions – and also a lot of curtailment via e.g. the Downward Flexibility Mechanism, as well as a forest of pylons to carry away surpluses in a bid to export them at negative prices, and many a fire risk battery park.
The reason there aren’t no wind farms near big cities is because there isn’t much in the way of strong consistent winds near big cities which are mostly in low-lying sheltered areas. Paying more for energy that is not present in adequate amounts in the available wind because it isn’t there is not going to have a significant effect on the problem. Building a wind turbine does not increase the available wind enrgy, neither the weather nor the topography are changed.
We don’t need solar energy in the summer we need maximum energy on demand in the winter when it’s cold and dark. Solar PV at 50 deg north is a daft idea, 11% duty cycle, NOT there when its cold and darkest.
THis is just delusional posturing that has not been quantified and costed by any competent engineer. CEng, CPhys
Hate this uneditable format. Correction.
For “there aren’t no” read either “there ain’t no” (US) or “there are few” (UK)
Corrollary: The wind enrgy is far away, so that’s where the wind mills are.
Whoever created this policy is awa’ wi the fairies. A fool. A chain of fools. If you build it, the wind won’t come. FFS
This is actually going to be much more controversial since it will hit some consumers hard, while offering Scots cheap prices most of the time.
Reports suggest that the introduction of zonal pricing is likely to cause controversy both amongst renewable energy operators and consumers by creating pricing disparities.
Under the new scheme, electricity generators would be paid different rates according to the distance between assets and consumers, reported The Telegraph.
Additionally, the disparity of renewable energy generation sites throughout Britain would see some customers paying more for their energy due to where they live.
Consumers in Scotland, which houses the majority of the UK’s onshore wind capacity (over 60%), would enjoy lower energy prices due to the higher volume of wind capacity; however, a briefing note written by Simon Gill and published in conjunction with the Scottish Futures Trust warned that this could intern decrease revenue for generators in Scotland.
Of course, a decrease in revenues will produce bleats for more subsidies….all to be paid for by consumers. Claims that this is going to save consumers money don’t make much sense. The only real way to do that would be to install dispatchable power stations at existing sites, able to make use of the existing grid infrastructure. Wind is not going to be built in England at scale, because the capacity factors are too poor to earn a return. Massive solar would create huge problems for the grid on sunny summer days – unless it is curtailed, or stored in batteries – both of which greatly increase costs.
Another complication is that OFGEM has spent the past several years unwinding locational network charging for generators – in line with ENTSO-E policy – and the dumping the remaining bill directly on consumers anyway (part of the reason why standing charges have risen so much).
Let’s see what the actual announcement opts for.