There are several reasons why UK energy bills are so high, chiefly the marginal pricing mechanism, which dictates that the price we pay for energy is set by gas prices on the global market.
The government reported that a huge 80% of the increase to the price cap in the first quarter of 2025 was caused by the rise in the wholesale price of gas.
Another factor is the frustratingly wasteful practice of the government paying compensation to wind power providers, asking them to turn off the turbines because grid infrastructure cannot cope with the extra power being provided.
This new BBC report highlights a case when turbines at the Moray East and West offshore wind farms were paid £72,000 not to generate electricity.
Meanwhile, 600 miles away, a gas-fired power station near London was paid £43,000 to switch on.
The report claims: “Payments like that happen virtually every day. Seagreen, Scotland’s largest wind farm, was paid £65 million last year to restrict its output 71% of the time.”
Mat Fascione / Lincs Offshore Wind Farm / CC BY-SA 2.0
It’s a crazy situation, so what can we do about it?
The UK’s grid was designed for one-way power flow, from a limited number of large coal and gas power stations, through to homes and businesses.
Wind, solar and other renewables are more numerous and spread out across the country – including offshore, on rooftops and in rural fields.
Power can now be generated and consumed at many different points on the grid, but the infrastructure was not designed to handle this complexity.
This is causing bottlenecks – also known as grid constraints – and where the wind blows strongest, it is leading to turbines being switched off.
There is a solution
Place Based Power – as developed by SNRG – places power generation, storage, and use where it is required – within towns, communities, campuses or business parks, for example.
SNRG’s unique place-based approach connects and optimises solar PV, battery storage, heat pumps and EV chargers across multiple buildings within a single location.
This delivers energy efficiencies and the ability to deploy more renewable energy with the available grid export capacity.
There is further hope on the horizon. The government recently confirmed that the Future Homes Standard (FHS) will require rooftop solar on all new-build homes.
It stated: “In 2023, the previous government proposed that new build homes would either need solar panel coverage equivalent to 40% of the building’s floor area or none at all. This approach would have allowed for too many exemptions and no solar being installed on these developments.
“The government is intending to bring forward rigorous proposals, that if developers cannot meet 40% coverage, they would still be required to install a reasonable amount of solar coverage.
“Under this proposal, it would be a functional requirement of the Building Regulations that new homes, with rare exceptions, are built with renewable electricity generation. In the vast majority of cases, we expect this would be solar panels.
“We are working with industry to set the technical detail ahead of publishing the final Future Homes Standard this Autumn.”
The policy could save households an average of £530 per year, while significantly boosting the country’s solar generation.
However, even the rooftop solar boom risks falling short without market reform and the rollout of smart local infrastructure – such as SNRG’s SmartGrid, a Place Based Power solution.
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