Is wind power generation all that it is cracked up to be?

The drive to carbon neutrality is no doubt going to be a key point in the next general election as the conservative party have recently announced that electricity generation will be carbon neutral by 2045.

The Labour party countered this by stating that this is not fast enough and have promised to cut all fossil fuels from electricity generation by 2030, just 7 years from now.

How are both parties going to achieve this and is wind generation all that it is cracked up to be?

With our political leadership taking the UK towards a renewable tomorrow, recent press reports are questioning if wind generation, a key element of this generation mix, is cost effective.

Based on the latest government auction, offshore wind farms starting service in 2024-25 will sell wind power at £48/MWh, roughly in line pre energy price crisis rates and well below the prices seen in the last two years when Russia turned the tap off in 2022.

However, in the last few weeks we have seen owners of the largest wind farm posting a halt to construction citing that they need bigger subsidies from the government to balance the books as the cost to generate is way above the projected sale (or strike) price. Also, the worlds biggest wind turbine producer Vesta has recently raised its pricing to £62/MWh, reported losses and had its credit rating downgraded.

This does seem to unfortunately indicate that wind power generation is going to be a lot more expensive than predicted and without the government subsidies, the question remains if it has a future as a large part of the future electricity generation mix.

As we move to EV’s for transportation needs, the demand on the network will only increase.

We all know that the transition to sustainable energy is going to be a costly one and we are all going to have to pay more for our electricity going forward.

The key question for all of us this at this stage is how much more?

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