LSE:NG 28 September 2025 - 20 December 2025

Octopus’s campaign has thrust the curtailment problem into the spotlight. Greg Jackson bluntly told The Independent that wind farm owners “realise there is a bunch of generators…that won’t get to market because of grid congestion, so they pay them anyway, and then they find someone else to fill the gaps” the-independent.com. In other words, billpayers fund idle wind farms and pricey backup power – a situation Jackson labels “a racket” the-independent.com the-independent.com. He illustrated it like “building a factory where there [are] no roads and then being paid for what you might have produced if there had been roads” the-independent.com. The scale of the waste is startling. Octopus’s own press release notes the UK’s largest wind farm is paid not to generate 71% of the time – making each unit of its electricity effectively four times more expensive octopus.energy. By July 2025 consumers had already paid ~£650 m to shut turbines down and fire up gas stations instead octopus.energy. Carbon Tracker warns that curtailment added about £40 to the average UK household’s bill in 2023 the-independent.com, and upcoming regulatory changes will pile on more costs.