Plate Nº 79 · recorded November 13, 2026
Science Policy & FundingReported finding
UK Grid Balancing Costs Climb 16% to £3.1 Billion
Grid balancing costs rose 16% to £3.1 billion in 2025/26, with nearly £0.5 billion paid to wind farms to turn down, NESO reports.
By Marcus Bennett3 min read536 words
In brief
- Balancing costs rose 16% in 2025/26 to £3.1 billion, with just under £0.5 billion paid to wind farms to turn down.
- NESO now performs more than twice as much balancing per unit of electricity as in 2018.
- Average balancing action cost rose from £90/MWh in April 2026 to £126/MWh in September, with record costs in October.
- December 2025 saw 9.2 TWh of unconstrained wind versus 7.9 TWh, at wholesale prices of £64/MWh versus £53/MWh.
- Network capacity across the B4/B5 boundary in central Scotland was 52% in October versus 67% in December.
Britain's electricity system operator spent £3.1 billion balancing the grid in 2025/26 — a 16% rise on the previous year — with just under £0.5 billion of that paid to wind farms asked to switch off. Those figures come from the National Energy System Operator (NESO), whose latest report lays out why keeping supply and demand matched is getting more expensive, and why simply building less wind would not fix it.
What is 'balancing' and why is it costing more?
Balancing is the constant, second-by-second work of matching electricity generation to demand, and of paying some power plants to produce more while paying others to turn down. NESO says that for every unit of electricity the country consumes, it now performs more than twice as much balancing work as it did in 2018. That steady escalation shows up directly in the bill.
The largest single component remains thermal constraint — in plain terms, bottlenecks where transmission lines cannot safely carry any more power, forcing the operator to pay generators on one side of the bottleneck to reduce output. Costs for two other services also rose: keeping voltage steady across the network, and responding quickly to sudden swings in supply and demand, both of which reflect how the shape of the electricity system itself is changing.
How did gas prices push up the bill?
Gas sets much of the price. NESO's data shows the average cost of a balancing action climbed from £90/MWh in April 2026 to £126/MWh by September, and total balancing costs hit record levels in October. When gas is expensive, every intervention that leans on gas-fired plants — including standing in for constrained-off wind — becomes more expensive too.
What do the monthly numbers show?
NESO's report highlights a contrast between October and December 2025:
- December delivered more unconstrained wind — 9.2 TWh versus 7.9 TWh — alongside higher wholesale prices of £64/MWh against £53/MWh.
- October, by contrast, had less network capacity available. Across the B4/B5 boundary in central Scotland, only 52% of capacity was usable, compared with 67% in December.
Read together, those numbers show the problem is not simply too much wind. When transmission capacity shrinks, even moderate output can overload the system and trigger costly curtailment.
Would less wind solve it?
NESO argues no. Without wind generation, the country would need gas to replace it — and more gas again to stand in for the wind that is currently constrained off. That substitution would add cost, not remove it. The operator's overall diagnosis is that three factors combine to drive high constraint costs: lots of wind, not enough electricity network, and high gas prices.
Some commentators have called for network reform or an entirely new network. NESO cautions that building out the grid takes time, and that even a new network would need further reinforcement in future as demand grows. There is no single, quick fix in the report.
For energy professionals, the practical takeaway is straightforward: constraint costs are tracking gas prices and network availability more than wind output itself, and the bill for both curtailment and reinforcement is set to grow until the wires catch up with the turbines.
via energylivenews.com (Source)
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News editor covering regulation, policy and their impact on general science news at SciBeat.
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