Wind farm operators agree to pay £33m for excessive charging

The owners of one of Scotland's largest offshore wind farms have been ordered to pay more than £33m after admitting to breaking a condition of its licence.

Beatrice Offshore Windfarm Limited (Bowl) operates 84 turbines in the Moray Firth, off the east coast of Caithness.

Energy regulator Ofgem said Bowl had charged excessive prices to reduce its generation output when this was required to keep the UK electricity grid balanced - resulting in higher costs for consumers.

The payment is the largest Ofgem has ordered an energy company to pay into its Redress Fund, which supports energy consumer projects.

Bowl, a joint venture led by SSE Renewables, said it had accepted it had breached a condition of one of its electricity generation licence conditions.

A spokesperson said: "The breach was in Bowl’s view wholly unintentional.

"Bowl will make a payment to the Ofgem consumer redress fund, has reviewed its bid pricing policy and fully cooperated with Ofgem throughout to conclude this process."

The spokesperson added: "With other industry participants, Bowl is engaging on proposed modifications to the relevant industry code and Ofgem’s ongoing consultation on its approach to interpreting and enforcing the transmission constraint licence condition."

The Beatrice wind farm has been operating for five years and can generate enough power for 450,000 homes.

It sells power into the UK electricity grid, but at times when the network is over-supplied Bowl is paid to switch its power off.

Ofgem ruled that Bowl had been charging the grid's operator excessive amounts for doing this.

It is fifth action Ofgem has taken against electricity generation companies since the start of 2023 in relation to breaches of this licence condition.

Other cases were:

• Drax Pumped Storage Limited - £6.12m

• SSE Generation Limited - £9.78m

• EP SHB Limited - £23.63m

• Dorenell Windfarm Limited - £5.53m

Ofgem said: "Bowl has co-operated fully with Ofgem in its enquiries to resolve the issue quickly and fairly."