Renewable Energy Foundation figures show 62 per cent of Viking’s output has had to be discarded in its first month

Ed Miliband’s flagship wind farm has already been paid close to £2.5 million to keep its turbines switched off, The Telegraph can reveal. The Telegraph has the story.

Mr Miliband, the Energy Secretary, praised the Viking wind farm in the Shetlands, which officially opened on Thursday, saying “hundreds of thousands of homes” across the country would benefit from “cheap, home-grown energy”.

He said the development, the UK’s largest onshore wind farm, “shows why we need more developments like this to make Britain a clean energy superpower”.

SSE, which operates Viking, promised that it would be Britain’s “most productive” onshore wind farm. But figures from the Renewable Energy Foundation (REF) show 62 per cent of its output has had to be discarded in its first month.

The wind farm has so far been paid £2.48 million by the National Grid to reduce its energy output, according to the REF analysis. 

The payouts, which will ultimately be added to consumer bills, have been made almost every day this month and have varied between £227,192 and £8,408 per day.

Known as constraint payments, they are paid out by the National Grid to incentivise wind farms to reduce output when more energy is generated than can be used locally or exported to consumers elsewhere in the UK, usually as a result of higher wind speeds.

The value of constraint payments to wind farms has increased rapidly in recent years as more of Britain’s power has come from renewable sources. Last year, wind farms were paid over £310 million to stop producing energy, up from £174,000 in 2010, according to REF data.

The charity’s analysis found that £1.8 billion had been spent since constraint payments began in 2010, which had ultimately been passed on to consumers’ electricity bills.

Dr John Constable, the director of the REF, said: “The paradoxical outcome is that wind farm developers actually make more money when they are paid to reduce output rather than when they are selling normally on the market. The British consumer is being ripped off, and developers are laughing all the way to the bank.

Read the full story here.