Blowing with the wind: solving a billion pound challenge

The challenge with wind

If there's one thing the UK can rely on, it's wind. While we may not love it when it's blowing a gale, the UK's constant breeze is brilliant news for green energy—if we make the most of it.

The UK's current energy system turns off wind turbines, even when they're spinning fast and generating a lot of cheap, clean energy.

This is known as wind curtailment. It's a way of making sure that this electricity doesn’t overload our power lines in certain areas—like Scotland— when the wind is blowing really hard.

But it's not just the waste of power we're worried about. It's the knock-on effect on people's bills. By 2030, it's projected the costs of turning off the turbines will rise to a staggering £3.7billion.

Rather than letting that energy go to waste, we should put it to good use.

Plans are underway to build more power lines to transport this excess power south. However, we also need to rethink how we price energy and offer people flexible ways to use electricity, rather than mainly using it in the evenings when they get home from work

Introducing: Regional pricing

Rather than a single country-wide price, we think electricity prices should vary by area and reflect what it costs to produce and supply the energy in that area. Here's why:

• People can make the most of cheaper, greener energy when it’s abundant, reducing the need to switch off turbines. This is especially true for people who live near wind turbines.
• More turbines would be built across the UK because more people benefit from the energy they produce.
• Cheaper prices would encourage more businesses to take advantage of new areas with turbines – our research suggests businesses could save between 65-99% of their energy costs by moving to Scotland with regional pricing.
• Giving people a chunk off their bills if they live near a wind turbine would help to generate more interest in communities.

Introducing: Consumer flexibility

Another way to use up spare green power is to encourage people to use their energy flexibly. Here are some of the ways we're doing just that:

Fan Club. If you're part of fan club, you get lower prices when your local turbine spins. We have 4 Fan Clubs across the country so far and customers typically save £300 a year. It's no wonder 30,000 other people have registered interest in their communities.

Power-ups is a collaboration with local network operators in areas that frequently have a green surplus. They tell us when the grid is green and we tell customers in the area to use more power for free or at a discount.

Saving sessions. Currently, the UK fires up extra dirty coal and gas stations to meet energy demand at busy times. Rather than paying fossil fuel generators to turn on, we are rewarding people by paying them to switch off or delay their energy use to off peak times.

Free Electricity does what it says on the tin and gives free power to Octoplus customers when wholesale prices plummet (a sure sign of an overflow of green electricity on the grid).

Smart tariffs. Our awesome smart tariffs are helping customers reap the benefits of using energy at off-peak times, and we want more people to play a part in transforming our energy grid.

A rising tide lifts all boats and roaring wind power should benefit us all. These flexible approaches help everyone use the grid in smarter, greener ways. So less energy is wasted, and more money is saved.