Wind Constraint - No2NuclearPower

Wasted wind power costs Britain almost £1.5bn in 2025. Cost of unutilised turbines rises by nearly 20pc with consumers paying through bills. Wasted wind power has cost Britain nearly £1.5bn this year as Ed Miliband's net zero rollout battles grid bottlenecks that threaten to send household bills spiralling. The cost of switching off wind turbines and firing up alternative power sources in 2025 has jumped by nearly a fifth compared to last year, new data shows. Households and businesses ultimately bear these costs through their bills. It is a fresh blow to Mr Miliband, the Energy Secretary, who has pledged to cut household energy bills by £300 a year this decade. So-called curtailment occurs when the grid is congested and cannot transport power from wind farms in remote areas, often in Scotland, to where it is needed most in other parts of the country. At the same time, grid operators must call on gas plants to step in and keep the lights on with replacement power, often at great expense. Sam Richards, of the pro-growth campaign group Britain Remade, warned that the "extraordinary" costs needed to be tackled urgently. He said: "It represents a catastrophic failure of the energy system, and households are paying the price for it. "While businesses and households see their bills rise, we're throwing away British-generated electricity and firing up expensive gas plants instead. "The result is higher costs, higher emissions, and zero benefit to consumers. "The solution is obvious. We need to build the infrastructure that will allow us to use the clean power we already have. "Stop paying to waste energy, stop over-relying on gas, and start delivering the cheap, secure electricity the country has been promised." The Government is also scrambling to upgrade the electricity grid's capacity. Still, key projects are currently on course to be delivered later than needed, raising the prospect of billions of pounds in additional curtailment costs. More than 40 of the 80 projects deemed critical to Mr Miliband's targets are set to be delivered at least a year later than they could have been, with the worst holdups stretching to between six and eight years, an analysis of official documents by The Telegraph has found. And some are already on course to be completed later than needed. These include the Sea Link undersea cable between Suffolk and Kent, as well as a new stretch of pylons from Norwich in Norfolk to Tilbury in Essex, both of which are currently scheduled for completion by 2031 rather than 2030.