- Wasted Wind ticker reveals, in real time, how much bill payers’ money is being frittered away by an outdated energy system
- The UK’s biggest wind farm, Seagreen, is paid to not generate 71% of the time it could be generating
- At the time of publishing, the ticker was at £691m
Turning off wind farms because the energy system cannot keep up with the rate of clean power generation has so far cost UK consumers £649m, according to Octopus Energy’s new live tracking tool.
Octopus Energy’s live ‘Wasted Wind’ ticker shows that the UK’s largest wind farm, Seagreen, is paid not to not generate 71% of the time it could be generating.
Instead of using readily available cheap clean energy, the UK has instead turned on gas power plants. In total, the UK waste so far is £200m more than last year. It is featured on its website and visible to 12 million monthly visitors.
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Octopus Energy has proposed a new zonal pricing system to solve and tackle this waste, but has also called on the government to take action.
Pete Miller head of customer experience, Octopus Energy, described the amount of renewable energy consumers are missing out on as proof that the National Grid was “shockingly wasteful”.
He said that as a result of paying wind farms not to generate, the cost of electricity is “four times higher than it needs to be”.
Miller said that “constraint costs” that are driven by wasted wind energy are on track to cost the UK £8bn a year by 2030.
“It’s crazy to build wind farms where there’s no grid, then pay them to sit idle, and then pay the most expensive fossil fuel plants to generate the power instead,” he said.
“Octopus was clear with customers that the energy crisis was caused by the cost of gas, and now we need to be clear that high electricity prices are the cost of a broken energy system.”
“Customers are told that renewables are cheaper, but they’ve seen the opposite in their bills, and initiatives like this will help explain why,” Miller continued.
The ticker marks the first step in Octopus’ work to highlight Britain’s energy waste. Soon, this information will be added to the 7.5 million bills sent every month and will feature in its app, used by 500,000 people daily.
Additional information breaking down more details on the cost of waste, and where customers’ money goes, will be added shortly.
The ticker can be found on Octopus’ website, which at the time of publishing was at £691m.
It comes as Octopus Energy and FTI released a report showing zonal pricing could save bill payers up to £27bn by reducing the need for nearly 3,000km of new power lines, minimising environmental and community disruption while lowering electricity costs.
