Owners of a windfarm in Shetland are paid £10million per year to turn off turbines during gale force winds – while locals living in its shadows are forced to pay some of Britain’s highest energy bills.
The Viking windfarm in the Shetland Islands, the northernmost region of the UK, hosts 103 turbines, but residents say they are often stationary during strong winds.
The reason given for turning them off is a lack of capacity on the grid to transmit the power to areas with the greatest demand, such as the south of England.
Operators of the windfarm SSE Renewables are paid up to £10million each year in constraint payments to turn them off when winds are high enough that it would produce too much electricity than the grid could handle.
Windfarm operators have agreements with the National Energy System Operator (NESO), a public corporation owned by the government which manages the electricity network, to provide a transmission service.
However if the flow of electricity has to be constrained, operators are entitled to these constraint payments as a form of compensation.
In 2025, SSE Renewables were paid £9.86million not to generate power at the Viking windfarm, which began operating in September 2024 and can power 500,000 homes.
The turbines were turned off for around 65 per cent of the time they could have been operating, according to industry data.
The Viking windfarm is connected to the Scottish mainland and the UK electricity grid by a 160-mile (almost 260km) subsea cable, but the local grid in Shetland has still not been connected.
The islanders are instead reliant on a diesel-fired power station in Lerwick, Shetland’s capital, and a gas-fired power station at Sullom Voe in the north of Mainland.
This leaves the 11,706 households on the Shetland Islands paying some of the highest energy bills in Britain despite being able to see the £580million turbine project which can power a medium-sized city from their windows.
The construction of the Viking windfarm was opposed by many locals who thought it was too big for the island and were concerned about the environmental impacts of the large carbon dioxide released during the excavation of peat in the construction phase.
Chair of the Sustainable Shetland community group Frank Hay, who lives in a bay in the hamlet of Weisdale on Mainland, Shetland’s principal island, told the Observer: ‘It’s disgraceful. SSE knew full well they would be paid, whether the wind turbines operated or not.’
Roxane Permar, an artist who lives on the island of Burra, told the publication locals are ‘horrified’ the windfarm is ‘earning money for doing nothing’, adding that the ‘industrialisation’ of Shetland has brought ‘very little benefit’ to the community.
‘These turbines have desecrated the landscape and are now raking in money when they are not being used. It seems absolutely pointless,’ she said.
The Viking windfarm was paid to turn off its turbines on Wednesday which meant NESO had to pay gas-fired power plants were being paid to help replace the lost energy.
The Seabank power station beside the Severn estuary, which is co-owned by SSE, was paid £1.6million in constraint payments on Wednesday to help replace the lost wind energy, while Keadby 2 in North Lincolnshire, also operated by SSE, was paid £1.3million.
Figures from data analysis website Kilowatts.io reveal 42 plants have been paid £1.42billion from January 1, 2025, to April 17, 2026, to help replace lost energy when wind turbines were switched off due to a lack of capacity on the grid.
Meanwhile, more than £445million was paid to wind farms in constraint payments to stop the turbines during the same period.
The Viking windfarm received £13.5million in constraint payments over the period.
All of these payments are ultimately paid for by households and businesses in their ever-rising energy bills.
A spokesperson for SSE said: ‘The UK has built renewable generation where the resources are strongest, it’s important we continue to upgrade the grid to remove bottlenecks so we can harness more of that energy, more of the time.
‘SSE is investing more than it makes in profits – £18million a day – largely focused on strengthening the grid in the north of Scotland – to unlock the full potential of our clean power system, helping deliver energy security and lower bills for homes and businesses.’
Last year, Scottish wind farms were paid an astonishing £347million to not generate electricity – helping to rack up a Britain-wide bill of more than £1.45billion for wasted wind power in a single year.
Operators north of the Border were handed the millions in constraint payments in order not to generate power.
But in total, wasted renewables costed Britain a massive ten-figure sum with the cash spent on switching off wind turbines and firing up alternative power sources.
In constraint payments alone, wind farms in Scotland were paid a remarkable £346,847,461 to stand idle in 2025.
All but five local authority areas in Scotland have wind turbines within them, laying bare the scale of how the power projects have taken over the country.
Politicians and campaigners alike have sounded the alarm about the scale of the constraint payments, which are ultimately borne by households and businesses through their bills.
MSP Douglas Lumsden, Scottish Conservative energy spokesman, said: ‘Hard-pressed Scots will rightly be questioning these soaring payments.
‘At a time when they are facing rising energy bills, they will wonder why they are footing an ever-increasing bill for turbines to be turned off.
‘Rural communities are being overwhelmed by the number of wind farms spreading across the country.
‘Labour and the SNP are riding roughshod over local community concerns.
‘While the right balance must be struck on our energy needs, delivering value for money for taxpayers must be a top priority at all times.’
And campaigner Denise Davis, of Communities B4 Power Companies, said: ‘The whole of the UK is having to pay for this. Every single time they get a bill, they’re paying.’
The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero have been contacted for comment.
