Monday 24 August — the wires mostly had room · updates daily
£410m over the last year — enough to pay for every home in Britain's electricity for 8.4 days.
When the wires are full, the grid operator pays wind farms to stop and pays gas plants elsewhere to start. Offshore wind farms were paid another £210m to switch off; they belong to no constituency, so they are counted separately. Why does this happen?
2 · THE UNBUILT
Meanwhile 23 GW of approved clean power is waiting to be built
Enough to supply a year's electricity to 11.8 million homes. Approved by planners two years ago or more. Waiting for a grid connection — not for permission.
3 · WHY
The wires are too thin
up to 11.6 GW
wanted to flow south on a windy day
about 4 GW
fits through the wire
37%
of the last year, the power that wanted to flow exceeded what the wire could carry (3,242 hours)
Power is made in the north and off the coast; it is used in the southern cities. The wires between have not kept up. Every pound on this site comes from that gap.
4 · WHAT FIXES IT
Wires andbatteries
New wires
Ready 2029
Eastern Green Link 1 — Torness to Hawthorn Pit, subsea · 2 GW · 2029
Eastern Green Link 2 — Peterhead to Drax, subsea · 2 GW · 2029
Harker–border line upgrade — higher-capacity wires on the existing cross-border pylons · done
Big new links take a decade to plan and build. The first upgrades are done; the big ones land at the end of the decade.
Batteries
Built in ~18 months
A battery behind the bottleneck soaks up the power that would be switched off and releases it when the wire has room. A battery near the city replaces the gas plant that gets paid to fill the gap.
72.1 GW of batteries approved and not built
5.7 GW refused planning in the last five years
Batteries do not replace the wires — they shift power in time, not distance. They cut the bill while the wires are built. How batteries fit in →
5 · YOUR SHARE
About £92 a year on every household's bill
That is roughly 51 days of your electricity, paid for switch-offs, for gas plants turned up to cover the gap, and for keeping the strained grid stable.