MARINE RENEWABLES & WINDFARMS
Scotland’s Largest Offshore Wind Farm ‘Switched Off Most Of The Time’
Scotland’s largest offshore wind farm was paid to shut down instead of generate electricity for almost three- quarters of 2024, according to a major new report.
The study from the Resolution Foundation think tank found that the £3 billion Seagreen wind farm, which is off the coast of Angus and came online in 2023, was paid to shut down for “71 per cent of the hours it was available in 2024 at a cost of £65 million”.
These curtailment, or constraint, costs are paid to wind farms to shut down when the UK electricity grid cannot handle the power they are generating. The costs, which are ultimately borne by energy bill payers, totalled £394m in 2024 and £382m in 2025, according to
data from the Renewable Energy Foundation.
Octopus Energy’s “Wasted Wind” tracker – which factors in both wind farm constraint payments and the costs of firing up gas plants to replace the lost electricity – put the total spent in 2025 at £1.47bn.
The Resolution Foundation report said: “Scotland holds around 35 per cent of Britain’s wind capacity but is responsible for over 98 per cent of constrained volumes and 94 per cent of curtailment costs.”
It went on: “In 2025, northern Scotland curtailed 8.8 TWh of wind generation at a cost of over £340 million. As such, only 61 per cent of the region’s potential output reached the grid.”
Noting that Seagreen was paid to shut down for 71% of its available
hours, the report warns that building more wind farms without expanding grid capacity will only push up curtailment costs and energy bills.
The report states: “The promised green jobs boom is yet to arrive. The 2010 target of 28,000 Scottish offshore wind jobs (by 2020) delivered just 5600 by 2024. This is in large part because electricity infrastructure has not kept pace with generating capacity, with grid constraints making Scottish wind the most curtailed in Britain.”
The Resolution Foundation argued that a switch to zonal electricity pricing, which was considered by the UK Government but rejected last year, would have been one way to help address the problem.
“This would have seen Scottish prices fall when the network is constrained and electricity in surplus, and – in the long run – would either discourage generation from siting where it cannot export or increase the incentive for heavy consumers to locate where there is a surplus of electricity,” the report said.
However, it added that due to the UK Government’s rejection of zonal pricing, “the constraint problem must be solved with new infrastructure instead”.
“But even if fast-tracked, the full set of grid reinforcements required – first to allow current Scottish wind power to be transported south, then to accommodate new output as additional capacity comes online – will not be in place until the 2030s.”
“A new wind farm consented today would begin generating around the end of this decade, several years before upgrades to the grid can carry its additional load. As such, the main consequence of building this new generating capacity is to add to constraint costs, rather than to generate useable electricity or to reduce carbon emissions.”
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www.dockyard-mag.com September Issue 2026
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