Ofgem Blames Wind Farms For Rising UK Energy Bills
The cost of switching off wind farms has been blamed for pushing up the energy price cap in a blow to Ed Miliband’s promise to cut bills by £300
Ofgem, the energy regulator, said the energy price cap for a typical dual-fuel tariff will increase from £1,720 per year to £1,755 in October.
It said the two percent rise was partly down to an increase in electricity network “balancing costs”, which includes money spent on switching off wind farms when the grid is too congested to accept their power.
These balancing costs added around £1.23 per month to bills, Ofgem said.
Another major factor in the bill increase was a levy to fund the Government’s Warm Home Discount scheme, which provides a £150 discount per year to the UK’s poorest households. This added another £1.42 per month to the price cap.
The numbers are embarrassing for Mr Miliband, the Energy Secretary, as he pushes ahead with plans to massively expand wind and solar power generation.
He has promised to cut household bills by £300 a year, but most people knew that was never going to happen.
But on Wednesday, critics warned the cost of switching off wind farms was only set to grow.
So far in 2025, Britain has already spent an estimated £815m on switching off wind farms and firing up alternative sources of power elsewhere – usually gas plants – according to the Wasted Wind tracker website.
That is up by more than a quarter compared to the same period just a year earlier.
According to the National Energy System Operator, the bill is expected to rise to almost £4bn by 2030 – but could rise to as much as £8bn if grid upgrades are not delivered on time.
Octopus Energy, the country’s biggest energy supplier, warned that higher bills were “sadly inevitable” because of this.
An Octopus spokesman said:
“The electricity market needs comprehensive reform so people benefit from cheap renewables rather than paying to turn off wind farms and then paying more for gas to replace the wasted wind.”
On Wednesday, the Government blamed the higher bills on the “fossil fuel penalty” being paid by households, with gas prices still above the levels seen before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Michael Shanks, the energy minister, said:
“That is why the only answer for Britain is this government’s mission to get us off the roller-coaster of fossil fuel prices and onto clean, home-grown power we control, to bring down bills for good.
At the same time, we are determined to take urgent action to support vulnerable families this winter.”
But Claire Coutinho, the Conservative shadow energy secretary, said this was “patently untrue”.
She said:
“Wholesale prices are falling. Bill rises have come from balancing costs – the costs of using renewables – and rising standing charges from Labour’s social redistribution policies.
These figures and Labour’s response make it crystal clear that Ed Miliband is not interested in the truth or cutting bills.”
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VOWG
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Stop the subsidies and see how long it lasts.
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Mike J
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One or two actual bills to consumers sans the subsidies should suffice I’d think
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Dean Jackson
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“Back radiation”/”downwelling” is the foundation of “Climate Change”,* a known fraud** thanks to the special properties of UV radiation when it enters Earth’s atmosphere, where all of UV-C is absorbed and sent back into space (along with 90% of UV-B):
“Solar UV radiation
The so-called “natural”, or “solar” UV radiation is ultraviolet (UV) radiation from the sun. Solar UV radiation can penetrate the earth’s atmosphere, depending on the wavelength.
UV-C: This highly energetic type of UV radiation is completely absorbed by the earth’s high atmosphere. Solar UV-C radiation, therefore, will not reach the earth’s surface.
UV-B: Depending on the state of the ozone layer, energetic UV-B radiation is also filtered out by the atmosphere, although not completely absorbed: Up to about ten per cent of the energetic UV-B radiation still reach the earth’s surface. Damage to the ozone layer increases the amount of UV-B reaching the earth’s surface.
UV-A: In contrast to UB-B and UV-C rays, the longer-waved UV-A radiation reaches the earth largely unobstructed.”
https://www.bfs.de/EN/topics/opt/uv/introduction/introduction_node.html#:~:text=The%20so%2Dcalled%20%22natural%22,by%20the%20earth's%20high%20atmosphere.
There you have it, there is no such thing as “back radiation”, identifying the Marxist co-option of our institutions, implementing Karl Marx’s 1843 directive for the “abolition of religion”, and the destruction of those civilizations “whose spiritual aroma is religion”…
Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, Karl Marx (1843)
“The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.”
…and…
“The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions.”
…and…
“It is, therefore, the task of history, once the other-world of truth has vanished, to establish the truth of this world.”
Now you know what Marxists are referring to when they utter the phrase, “The Struggle”…
“The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.”
ADDENDUM
In the article by David Wojick, “The Green New Deal could make electricity 28 times more expensive” ( https://www.cfact.org/2024/09/03/the-green-new-deal-could-make-electricity-28-times-more-expensive/ ), he observes: “Given electrification, the cost of electricity might jump a whopping 28 times today’s cost. The Green New Deal causes the average household electricity bill to go up a crushing $52,500.” David Wojick’s cost estimates are based on today’s supply and demand for the constituent minerals that go into the manufacture of backup batteries. Today, in the United States 38.4% of electricity is derived from wind/solar/hydroelectric/nuclear sources, most of which don’t require battery backup because electricity can be borrowed by the existing traditional electricity grid. As global demand increases for battery backup, the costs associated with mineral extraction will skyrocket at least ten-times what the costs are today, where we arrive at an average household cost of…
10 x $52,500 = $525,000
It should also be noted that the minerals needed to manufacture the world’s backup batteries to satisfy demand will take approximately 500 years to accomplish, meaning 99.9% or better of humanity will be annihilated, in compliance with Karl Marx’s 1843 directive to implement the “abolition of religion”, and the destruction of those civilizations “whose spiritual aroma is religion”.
As presented in the following NASA graph:
https://mynasadata.larc.nasa.gov/basic-page/earths-energy-budget
Notice another absurdity of the “climate change” canard that’s never discussed…the 340 W/m2 figure in the NASA illustration constitutes Far Infrared Radiation (FIR) that the surface emits at night (FIR is only emitted at nighttime). Now, look at the figure for the daytime energy magnitude absorbed by the surface. See it? 163 W/m2. In other words, the “climate change” canard tells us that daytime temperatures are cooler than nighttime temperatures! This is the in-your-face absurdity of the “climate change” fraud.
** An energy density gradient is always in the direction of a downwards slope (think of water’s energy density gradient, does it slope upwards or downwards? ), not upwards against greater resistance! Moving closer towards the Earth’s surface, the atmospheric energy density gradient increases, while moving in the opposite direction the energy density gradient decreases.
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