Question to the Department for Energy Security & Net Zero:

To ask His Majesty's Government how much was paid in each of the past five financial years as constraint payments to wind farm operators to compensate them for having to turn off their wind turbines to avoid the grid being overloaded in (1) England, (2) Scotland and (3) Wales.

The National Energy System Operator (NESO) is responsible for operating Great Britain’s electricity system and managing constraints. NESO publishes monthly constraint costs on their website, which can be found on page 3 of the Monthly Balancing Services Summary (MBSS) dashboard. This data is split by England and Wales and Scotland.

Constraints are a natural part of operating an efficient electricity system and constraint payments are used around the world. However, government is working to reduce the level of constraints and improve energy security by accelerating the delivery of new electricity network infrastructure to increase capacity on the system.