Britain's grid operator spent £47.9m in ONE DAY paying windfarms to switch off while firing up gas plants

National Grid's operator shelled out £47.9m on a single Wednesday because bottlenecks in the transmission network left Scottish windfarms with nowhere to send their power. It paid £1.6m in a single half-hour period alone, with every penny added to household energy bills. Balancing costs hit £505m in September, the highest monthly total ever recorded, and are projected to reach £3.2bn over the next year.

Around 9 gigawatts of wind and hydro capacity — enough to power over 8 million homes — was paid to sit idle that day.

With homegrown power blocked by grid constraints, the operator was forced to fire up gas and biomass plants and buy electricity from Europe via undersea cables instead.

The crisis comes days after National Energy System Operator had to seek emergency electricity imports from France at the last minute to keep Britain's lights on.