Wednesday, July 13, 2011

I'm in the Wrong Business, Part 816: Scottish Wind Turbines Receive £900,000 for Switching Off (for one night!)

I had heard of the "not producing electricity in Scotland" scheme but thought I had time before I had to not produce.
ya snooze, ya lose.
From The Telegraph:
Wind farms paid £900,000 to switch off for one night
Wind farms operators were paid £900,000 by the National Grid to disconnect their turbines for one night because the electricity was not needed. 

The payments, worth up to 20 times the value of the power they would have produced, raises serious concerns about such subsidies, which are paid for by the customer.
The six Scottish wind farms were asked to stop producing electricity on a particularly windy night last month as the National Grid was overloaded.
Their transition cables do not have the capacity to transfer the power to England and so they were switched off and the operators received compensation. One operator received £312,000, while another benefited by £263,000....MORE

HT: Knowledge Problem

For the entrepreneurial among you, under the EU's Common Agricultural Policy you can also be paid for not producing cattle and some grains, although I'm not sure where the best place to set up shop is.

Not producing wheat somewhere on the Côte d'Azur, perhaps Saint-Tropez, might be agreeable.

st-tropez-marina

St Tropez Marina