Consumers need more cable infrastructure to utilise available energy.

An investigation reveals that the UK’s power transmission infrastructure cannot handle the maximum capacity of the country’s wind farms. On days with the most wind, the absence of cables between Scottish wind farms and the UK is partially to blame for significant power loss. Only one major subsea cable and two major junctions link the British transmission network to offshore generation. 

Therefore, incredibly windy days result in power bottlenecks that necessitate the shutdown of turbines to avert damage.

Despite this, wind capacity in Scotland and the North Sea continues to expand, with numerous large wind farms being constructed.

National Grid, a British transmission company, spent £215 million in 2022 to shut down wind turbines and another £717 million to turn on gas turbines closer to the demand. According to a spokesperson, the National Grid Electricity System Operator manages electricity supply and demand in the UK and “operates the system most cost-effectively for the consumer, keeping capital costs as low as possible,” according to a spokesperson.

“Like many system operators worldwide, we make constraint payments when it is more cost-effective, for example, to reduce wind output than to build costly new infrastructure temporarily.

Constantly analysing constraint costs versus the construction of new assets and collaborating with the industry to reduce the impact of network constraints while constructing a greener system.

In addition, a spokesperson for the UK’s energy regulator Ofgem stated that a streamlined regulatory approval and funding process had been established.  Under UK government goals, the regulator expects this to facilitate the connection of up to 50GW of offshore wind energy by 2030. According to the regulator, this will “rapidly” unlock approximately £20 billion in network investment.