2 Sept 2025
The madness of the Scottish and UK government obsession with wind power has once again been laid bare by the looming rise in household power bills despite wholesale energy bills falling.
The average bill will rise to around £1,755 a year in October after UK government regulator Ofgem announced a larger than expected rise last week, a rise of £35.
But Ofgem also revealed that an astonishing 41 per cent of the increase, around £15 per household, will fund “balancing costs,” which include paying wind farms to switch off when they produce more electricity than the grid can handle ─ so-called “constraint” payments ─ and to cover paying for imported resources when there isn’t enough.
Wasted Wind, an online tracker from Octopus Energy, calculates that £815 million has already been spent this year on turning wind farms off and paying gas plants to switch on which is up massively from last year.
And according to the National Energy System Operator (NESO), constraint costs for shutting down wind farms reached £1.7 billion in 2024/25, and are set to climb to £7 billion as even more turbines are rushed through planning before the grid is fit to cope.
Having already borne the brunt of industrial-scale wind development, Scottish Borders residents have every right to feel bitter about the increased energy bills they face.
Over the past two decades, the Borders hillsides once known for their natural beauty have been dotted with hundreds of turbines, their dominance visible for miles, while promises of cheaper bills and local economic benefit have not materialised.
Instead, locals are left with spoiled landscapes, noise complaints, traffic disruption during construction, and the knowledge that their communities are carrying far more than their fair share of Scotland’s renewable burden.
UK households are paying billions for subsidies to underwrite wind farm profits, while also covering the cost of back-up fossil fuel plants that must fire up whenever the weather fails. The Borders, meanwhile, are expected to absorb yet more wind projects despite clear local opposition and mounting evidence that the country already has more than it can use.
John Williams, chair of Heriot Community Council: “This isn’t just about money. It’s about fairness. It’s about protecting our landscapes, our communities, and our future. If Miliband and his colleagues want to plaster the countryside with turbines, they should be spreading them out across the country. The Borders have had enough.
“It’s time for government to face reality: wind power is not delivering cheaper bills, it’s delivering higher ones. It is not “saving the planet” when vast sums are wasted switching them off. And it is certainly not fair to pile even more on a region that has already given so much.”