Wind scam: now we pay for no power

Telegraph,Christopher Booker

"Not only do we give £1 billion a year in subsidies to the owners of Britain’s 3,500 wind turbines in return for pitiful amounts of electricity, but now we must also pay them, through our bills, to produce no electricity at all. During last weekend’s gales, 13 wind farms were told to switch their turbines off because they were chucking out more power than the grid could safely handle. For this they will receive “constraint” payments potentially worth millions of pounds. In May this year, energy companies paid £2.6 million to shut down Scottish wind farms for the same reason.

So, in the windless days of last winter’s freeze, the turbines contributed almost no power at a time of peak demand; and when the wind does blow, we pay them to contribute nothing. Sir Reginald Sheffield, the Prime Minister’s father-in-law, who earns nearly £1,000 a day from the windfarm on his Lincolnshire estate, is certainly in the right business."