{
  "id": 14730568,
  "title": "Cost of balancing Great Britain’s power grid reaches nearly £50m a day",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/10/15/cost-of-balancing-great-britains-power-grid-reaches-nearly-50m-a-day",
  "topic": "business",
  "section": "Business",
  "published": "2026-10-15T15:36:16.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Guardian Business",
    "slug": "guardian-business",
    "url": "https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/oct/15/cost-of-balancing-great-britain-power-grid-50m-daily"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "The cost of managing Great Britain's power grid has skyrocketed to nearly £50 million daily due to wind farms being forced to shut down and gas plants being activated. This extreme measure is taken when there are power transmission bottlenecks around the country, resulting in a surplus of electricity in some areas and a shortage in others. The grid operator pays the wind farms to cease operations and the gas plants to commence work, with these expenses ultimately passed on to household energy bills. The highest recorded payment for a single half-hour period was £1.6 million.\n\nThese costs have contributed to a monthly total of £505 million in September, surpassing the previous monthly record. The yearly estimate is projected to reach £3.2 billion. Experts argue that the rapid expansion of British power networks, aimed at accommodating new renewable energy projects, has not kept pace with the increasing demand, leading to these financial setbacks.\n\nWind farms and hydro power plants with approximately 9 gigawatts of capacity were instructed to reduce output on Wednesday, powering over 8 million typical households. Instead, the grid operator had to compensate by activating gas and biomass plants and procuring additional electricity imports from Europe through high voltage subsea cables.\n\nGrid operator Neso sought emergency assistance from its French counterpart, which agreed to send last-minute power supplies to the UK on Monday and Friday. The system was not strictly short of power supplies, according to Shivam Malhotra, head of power trading at LCP Delta. The problem lies in insufficient infrastructure to transport power to where it's needed. This issue primarily affects Scottish wind farms, which are compelled to shut down due to inadequate high voltage cabling connecting to regions with growing electricity demand in the south.\n\nNeso faced significant grid challenges in the summer when a high pressure heat dome caused a decline in renewable energy output and a surge in electricity demand for air conditioning and refrigeration. In June, Neso even had to bring in independent investigators to investigate claims of staff involvement in a potential blackout cover-up during record-breaking temperatures. Neso's CEO, Fintan Slye, assured that no customers were disconnected and power frequencies stayed within statutory limits during that period. He acknowledged the challenging nature of the situation and emphasized the need to learn lessons from the review conducted by the industry regulator Ofgem.",
  "summary": "Grid operator is paying huge sums to switch off windfarms in areas of excess electricity generation while turning on gas plants elsewhere The cost of balancing Great Britain’s power grid has soared to near-record highs of almost £50m a day after windfarms were turned off due to bottlenecks in transmitting power around the country. The grid operator paid £47.9m on Wednesday to turn windfarms off…",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}