The cost of wind farms

The Global Warming Foundation put out a piece of work yesterday claiming that 6 offshore wind farms share £1.6bn between them in annual subsidies. It went on to argue that the renewables obligation now costs consumers £6bn a year and the capacity market £1bn a year. They object to income transfers to the wealthy they think own the windfarms from lower income consumers and are worried about grid stabilisation with more intermmittent wind power.

Clearly there is a price for making capacity available whatever the fuel. The costs also depend on which power station and fuel type of allowed to run the most, which affects the unit costs of power delivered. I have not had chance yet to check these figures, but would be interested in reactions to them, as they do show high costs and prices which makes the U.K. less competitive and is hard on family budgets.