Britain's Renewable Energy Boom Is Hitting a Grid Bottleneck
Dips Into Strategic Oil Reserve Again Amid Supply Disruptions Felicity Bradstock is a writer and journalist based in Mexico City.
She writes for energy websites and covers several other industries, as well as writing… The United Kingdom has invested heavily in expanding its renewable energy capacity in recent years to reduce its dependence on fossil fuels and support a green transition.
However, one major problem stands in the way of it achieving this goal – its unprepared transmission infrastructure.
Despite several new wind and solar projects coming online, the U.K.
still relies heavily on natural gas due to grid inefficiencies that are delaying the shift to green energy.
is spending up to £50 million a day to balance its power grid, as it’s forced to regularly take wind farms offline due to nationwide transmission network bottlenecks.
On 14thOctober, the grid operator reportedly spent £47.9 million to switch off wind farms in areas experiencing an oversupply of electricity.
At the same time, it had to power up gas plants in other areas with a low electricity supply.
spent £505 million in September alone on balancing power on the grid, the highest monthly cost recorded to date.
The figure is expected to reach up to £3.2 billion over the next year as Great Britain continues to work through its£150 billion transmission infrastructure upgrades.
These balancing costs ultimately shift to consumers, as they are leviedon household energy bills.
Despite big plans for a modernised grid, upgrades are not keeping pace with the deployment of new renewable energy capacity, which is occurring at a record pace.
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