Rubbish Check
Daily Mail Money · 5 October 2026
source“Britain has blown past last year’s £1.5bn bill for switching off wind farms with three months of the year still to go”
R6/ 10
Spin-heavy
Rubbish Rating — 1 = base fact, 10 = pure rubbish
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In short
Rubbish Talk rates the Daily Mail's claim that Britain has "blown past last year's £1.5bn bill for switching off wind farms" a 6/10 because the figure itself checks out against the article's own data, but the headline pins the entire cost on wind curtailment when the piece itself says gas-replacement power, inflated by the Middle East war, makes up the majority of the spend.
The Verdict
Spin-heavy. The headline number is accurate but the framing misattributes the bill: the article states firing up gas plants to replace curtailed wind "represents the majority of the constraint costs," and that gas prices are surging because of the Middle East war, not because wind farms are inherently wasteful. The sole data source is also Octopus Energy's own "Wasted Wind" tracker, a commercial supplier with a direct financial interest in the zonal/local pricing reform it champions, not an independent grid-operator figure, and the headline gives readers no hint of that.
What actually happened
Analysis from Octopus Energy's Wasted Wind tracker shows constraint payments, money paid to wind farms to switch off and to gas plants to switch on in their place, have already topped the £1.47 billion total racked up for the whole of last year, with three months of 2026 still to run. September alone was a record month, and temporary grid upgrades in Scotland have worsened the bottleneck this year.
Key facts
- Constraint costs so far this year have passed £1.5bn, already exceeding the £1.47bn total logged for all of last year, with three months left to go.
- September 2026 set a monthly record of £404 million in constraint costs.
- The single costliest day was 30 September, at £30 million paid to wind and gas generators in 24 hours.
- Firing up gas stations to replace curtailed wind "represents the majority of the constraint costs," per the article, and gas prices have risen due to the Middle East war.
- Some Scottish grid sections are running at just 40% of capacity because of temporary upgrade works, which Wasted Wind says has worsened the problem.
- The government's own analysis cited in the piece puts potential annual constraint costs as high as £10 billion by 2030 if unaddressed.
What to watch for
- Whether National Grid ESO publishes official constraint-cost figures that corroborate Octopus's self-published tracker, since no independent dataset is cited.
- How much of the next quarter's bill is gas-price-driven versus genuine wind curtailment once Scotland's grid upgrades finish and capacity normalises.
- Whether coverage elsewhere separates the "switch off wind" cost from the larger "switch on gas" cost, or keeps bundling them under one headline-friendly figure.
About this scoreThe R-Score is Rubbish Talk's editorial opinion on how far a headline's framing sits from what the underlying facts support. It is a judgement about presentation and emphasis, not an allegation that any outlet has acted dishonestly. Every figure we rely on is linked under Receipts so you can check it yourself.
