Record costs pile up fast
Britain has already spent more than £1.5bn this year paying wind farms to switch off while expensive gas plants run instead. The milestone arrived three months earlier than last year, according to Octopus Energy's Wasted Wind tracker. September alone added £404.3 million, including seven of the tracker's most expensive days on record. The single costliest day was 30 September, when £30 million was paid out in 24 hours.
How the waste happens
The grid cannot always move cheap wind power from Scotland to where it is needed, so wind farms are paid to curtail output. Temporary upgrade works have cut some Scottish transmission boundaries to just 40% capacity. Higher gas prices, driven by global events, then push up the cost of the replacement power. The system operator NESO forecasts constraint costs could reach £3.2 billion in the year to July 2027.
What it means for bills
These constraint costs land directly on household and business energy bills. Wind and solar have already cut UK gas imports by £5.9bn, yet the current setup still wastes cheap home-grown power. Greg Jackson, Founder and CEO of Octopus Energy, said: “We've already blown past last year's entire bill, and customers are paying every pound of that waste. It's madness.
“We’re spending billions to build more grid, while failing to use our existing infrastructure more efficiently. Instead of paying to throw away homegrown cheap power, we should be using it to bring bills down for households and businesses.”
One fix on the table
Other OECD countries use location-based wholesale pricing that better matches generation to demand. Analysis commissioned by Octopus Energy suggests this could save a typical household up to £114 a year. You can compare current energy deals on our gas and electricity pages to see what is available now.
