Welcome to Scotland, where we generate 5 times as much electricity as we use, but households pay the highest prices in the UK for it.

Power to cheap to meter they promised us when they flooded our glens.

Aye. So many opportunities for joined-up government thinking here.

Decouple the price of electricity from that of natural gas. Allow people and industry to pay the real price of their power. Cheaper electricity for the datacentres. "And also for the Jocks, though. Can't have that!"

Look at possible use of the small nuclear power generators that they have been talking about. Could be ideal. Although there are environmental considerations, of course, and it's not clear what the Scottish people's attitude would be. Are you completely anti-nuclear, or just against nuclear weapons?

BTW, "power too cheap to meter" originated in the US in the 1950s, applied to nuclear power generation. Large-scale hydroelectricity in Scotland goes back to the 1920s and 1930s, with smaller schemes before that.

Some safeguards (which would keep the price up by a certain amount) would be advisable to avoid a repeat of the deadly 2021 events in Texas.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanark_Hydro_Electric_Scheme

Opened in 1926 and still operating today, unfortunately the stations aren't open for tours but New Lanark and the Falls of Clyde are well worth a visit for anyone in the area. The Falls are spectacular and despite the power stations the whole area is a nature reserve.

Haw Cruachan, do you know of any hydro power schemes in Scotland that *are* open for public tours? ;-)

Ha, yes, at least one!

There are actually quite a few, Torness has a visitor centre (nuclear) and so does Dounreay, although it's no longer in operation.

Whitelee Windfarm has a very good visitor centre and cafe, and is also great for cycling with miles of gravel tracks and a mountain bike park as well

https://www.scottishpower.com/pages/visitor_centres.aspx says that Tongland in Galloway has a visitor centre as well as Cruachan, but given that it mentions both Longannet and Cockenzie (closed in 2016 and 2013 respectively) it's less than current.

"Torness has a visitor centre (nuclear) and so does Dounreay, although it's no longer in operation."

Pedant alert! They're nukes, not hydro.

If only I'd put (nuclear) in my post to avoid pedantry.

Pedant alert, I did.

adding detail & value gets you nowhere these days

Have a look at: https://www.pitlochrydam.com/

went round it a few times as a child, and always enjoyed watching the salmon climb the run up the side of the dam.

Seems to be Scottish Powers poster child site for Hydro.

"Power too cheap to meter" was also associated with nuclear power here in the 1950s - relating to the experimental (but still somehow guaranteed to be ultra-safe ) fast breeder reactor built at Dounreay, coincidentally about as far it possibly could be from London...

The current situation is about as unfair as it possibly could be; the Highlands in particular has been industrialised with gigantic wind farms and the connected infrastructure - just today I had to wait at a road block as yet another gigantic turbine blade was being transported - and yet we pay even higher rates for our electricity than those even farther south in Scotland. This is "justified" by the fact that we're supposedly in a remote area (but remote only for electricity going one direction obviously!)

"This is "justified" by the fact that we're supposedly in a remote area (but remote only for electricity going one direction obviously!)"

Simple reality. It would be feasible to have every house pay near enough its exact cost of distribution, but that would make rural living affordable only for those who didn't want a mains electricity connection. Everybody in a region gets bundled up together, and the costs of the distribution kit get divided up between them. In practice, the mainland towns in Northern Scotland are paying a huge subsidy to the villages and crofts, but I don't hear many Scots voices demanding that remote hill farms should pay ten times as much as Glaswegians?

The same arguments apply to rural vs urban areas in Wales and England.

If we're one country - a united kingdom if you will - why not split that cost equally between everyone in the country, not just localised subsets?

That way, it would make us chippy Jocks less peeved about helping to pay for massive "national" infrastructure projects like the Elizabeth Line, HST2 and no-doubt the third runway at Heathrow, whilst things like the Queensferry Crossing are entirely self-funded.

It works two ways, doesn't it? All the generation is done here and the infrastructure to export that to the centres of "civilisation" is on a very different scale to the comparatively simple local low voltage distribution network...

To me, small modular nuclear generators should be near the point of consumption and that isn't Scotland. Why not put them close to the cities of south-east England?

To me, small modular nuclear generators are a very attractive target for terrorists, just like their bigger relatives, and should be treated as such. i.e. build them in hardened bunkers away from centres of population with 24/7 armed guards.

If a terrorist wanted to cause a radiological release, they'd have a much easier time targeting the radiotherapy department of a hospital. If they had the sort of devices capable of cracking one open, it would be less harmful than them taking said devices on public transport.

With all these AI Datacentres being built, then put a load of SMR's next to them. If that happens to be in Scotland then so be it.

Those things suck up power at a rate that if they pay commercial rates will make them uneconomic. Personally, I hope that this bubble will burst before the first mega DC starts to work.

The problem is people think we live in a democracy. Bailouts and subsidies for billionaires, and the MPs defend it. We keep voting them in, whatever party.

and it's not clear what the Scottish people's attitude would be

we can tell your not from around these parts

While we are a net exporter of electricity, we do not generate five times as much as we use. In 2023, we generated ~47.5TWh and used ~31.6TWh, so we generated about 1.5 times what we used, still quite impressive. We might have the *potential* to generate five times what we use; however if domestic consumption grows massively due to people building tons of datacentres here, then that calculation goes out the window.

but households pay the highest prices in the UK for it

Nothing like a Scotsman with grievance, eh? Scots don't pay the highest energy prices in the UK, that dubious honour goes to North Wales & Mersey, followed by North West (England).

Northern Scotland comes third, followed by South East (England) but in all cases the regional differential is down to the costs of the transmission and in particular local distribution. Very rural and remote areas pay more because there's a lot more power line investment needed per average property. In built up areas it's more complex, because high population density reduces unit costs, but often results in less available headroom and new investment requirements. It's those reasons why Southern Scotland pays a lot less than Northern Scotland).

> Scots don't pay the highest energy prices in the UK, that dubious honour goes to North Wales & Mersey, followed by North West (England).

Are you sure about that?

Northern Ireland electricity prices appear higher (e.g. "https://powerni.co.uk/compare-electricity-ni/unit-rates/" and "https://www.consumercouncil.org.uk/consumers/help-consumers/electricity-oil-and-gas/switching-electricity-or-gas-supplier/greater") than those of North Wales & Mersey (using figures from "https://www.uswitch.com/gas-electricity/guides/regional-energy-prices/?essential=true&essential=true&performance=false&marketing=false&functionality=false&social=false")

North Wales & Mersey may have the highest energy prices in GB however.

Nowhere to store the power is the issue as well, there are a few battery farms under development but nowhere near enough for all that power, and given that the cost to export to England is what killed Longannet (as well as it being coal) selling it isn't going to be option either.

Consent has long been in place to convert Sloy to pumped storage, but it hasn't happened and possibly never will due to non-native invasive fish in Loch Lomond and no way as yet to stop them getting in to the reservoir above.

With a bit of luck the AI bubble will burst before any of them get built anyway, seeing as that's what they'll get used for.

Take an upvote simply for your name - with a name like that, you probably know what you're talking about.

We already export more than we consume to England. And we're building another interconnector, which we are paying for!

Madness!

Do you have a source on the funding claim? I was under the impression that EGL2/3 are paid for by transmission PLCs and their role in selling energy generated in Scotland to the rest of the UK would effectively mean they're being paid for by those customers.

@Catkin, I did a bit of research and here's what I've come up with:

The Eastern Green Link projects are built by the transmission companies (SSEN Transmission and National Grid), but the costs don’t stay with them — Ofgem approves these as regulated investments, and the money is recovered through UK-wide transmission charges, which ultimately flow into consumer bills.

Key points with sources:

Ofgem has formally approved Early Construction Funding and capital allowances for EGL2/3 under the Accelerated Strategic Transmission Investment framework. These costs are recouped through Transmission Network Use of System (TNUoS) charges paid by suppliers and generators.

Source: Ofgem announcement — “Ofgem unlocks early investment…”

https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/press-release/ofgem-unlocks-early-investment-slew-fast-track-clean-power-projects

In 2025, the UK National Wealth Fund provided £600 million to ScottishPower for major Scottish grid upgrades including the EGL links, as part of a £1.35bn financing package with commercial lenders.

Source: Offshore Energy — “£713.5m to back two Eastern Green Links…”

https://www.offshore-energy.biz/e713-5m-to-back-two-eastern-green-links-and-five-other-uk-grid-upgrade-projects/

Transmission owners (the “PLCs”) do not pay the project costs themselves. They receive an Ofgem-regulated return, and the cost is recovered via the charging regime. Because network charges vary by region, Scottish consumers and generators pay proportionally more — hence the higher standing charges in Scotland.

Source: Ofgem — transmission charging methodology

https://www.ofgem.gov.uk

So yes, customers across UK contribute — but not equally, and it is a mix of funding sources..

Scotland sits in the highest-cost transmission zone, so Scottish households and generators bear a disproportionately larger share of the EGL cost recovery, which seems a little unfair for energy generated in Scotland but consumed in England.

Hope that clarifies!

Thank you very much for taking the time to break it down and put inline sources. I really do appreciate it.

We already export more than we consume to England. And we're building another interconnector, which we are paying for!

Madness!

Not really. Once those new interconnectors are in place, we'll be able to really stick it to the English with high prices for our no-carbon electricity. The new interconnects will pay for themselves in no time. Think of it as karma for Westminster stealing all our oil over the last 40+ years.

Scotland produces far more electricity than it consumes, and the VAST majority from renewables. There is only a single large-scale gas-fired power station in Scotland.

"Estimating emissions from the datacenters is difficult, since few developers have volunteered this information. But according to NESO, generation of energy from fossil fuels in Scotland is expected to reach zero sometime between 2035 and 2040 as energy from renewable sources rises to replace it.

It should therefore follow that the new facilities will also be emitting zero greenhouse gases by then, if they are powered from the grid. That still leaves 10 to 15 years of potential emissions in the meantime, however."

Hence, not sure where this comes from?

As for discounts to bit barn builders and operators for energy... Em, why? Surely these people should subsidise the energy consumption of the general populus for whom the energy should be produced! We are the ones receiving increases in our bills, due to a lack of investment by energy companies in the grid. My understanding was that standing charges were meant to pay for maintenance and investment in the grid and transmission infrastructure. Yet, as has been announced today, we are going to receive an increase in our bills to cover the cost of a multi-billion investment in the grid, etc.

Just no! It's high time that these companies should be held accountable to their lack of investment. Put a cap on their profits. Put a cap on what they can pay out as dividend. Force them to invest in what is a piece of critical infrastructure for everyone.

The grid itself is badly designed to support the energy generation mix we have nowadays, as it is. Wind farms should be connected to storage systems, with the storage systems connected to the grid. That way we can use the energy when we need it and store it when we don't. Think Dinorwick. Power on demand and keep a constant base.

It's not difficult people!!!

@TheRabs80

"We are the ones receiving increases in our bills, due to a lack of investment by energy companies in the grid."

I was right with you until this point. The grid is maintained and worked well. Then the new religion took over demanding windfarms and solar that do not work the way we are used to generating energy. We used to generate the energy we needed, where it was needed and reliably. Now we put these unreliable sources where they may generate electricity when the conditions are right which is why it requires vast spending to pass the electricity to the parts of the country that need it.

The only people around to pay for it is us and so this big push for these sources of energy comes with a bill. If you want storage you will need to pay for that too which then comes to how should we store the energy? Battery tech is nowhere near good enough and is very expensive. So we can flood a few places for pumped storage maybe if you can get activists/government to allow it. Whatever we do will need to be backstopped by a reliable power generator regardless so you have to pay for that to run inefficiently to prop up the unreliable sources.

All of this comes to your bills. They lied when they said this was free energy. Its really freaking expensive. If you dont believe me look at your bills.

Hell did you see the news that the Hinkley nuclear power station we badly need has to spend over £700 million for a fish disco to save 0.08 of a salmon per year? It isnt the companies demanding the price shoots up

"The grid is maintained and worked well."

Assuming that by worked well you completely ignore any consequences.

My car worked really well - I was doing 90mph quite happily, there happened to be a class of school children using a crossing, but I ignored the red light and my bull bars did their job...

The grid is undergoing a significant change, and a change for the better. The fact that you've heard from some bloke down the pub that their cousin heard from Lying Farage that an oil bath is good for sea birds doesn't mean that you're right.

@John Robson

"Assuming that by worked well you completely ignore any consequences."

Like what? Nope it worked. Power generated where it was needed and delivered.

"The grid is undergoing a significant change, and a change for the better."

So using your car analogy the car worked great, then you had it modified to be unreliable AND THEN YOUR SCENARIO.

The grid is going through significant change. That is exactly what I said and TheRabs80 seemed to also be saying. And our only point of disagreement was him saying the energy companies are to blame while I point to the gov causing this issue. And its increasing and will continue to increase our energy bills. You may believe that is for the better but thats your opinion. This is not gossip at the pub, this is reality hitting us all.

Like what?

See you won't even mention climate change to try to deny it.

And don't worry about any health issues from the products of combustion either, they're "not your problem"

Renewables are cheaper than other forms of generation, as well as being significantly less damaging.

@John Robson

"See you won't even mention climate change to try to deny it."

Why would I mention it? The climate changes I thought that was known science. If you further believe in MMCC co2 theory it still doesnt invalidate what I said at all. That the MMCC co2 belief can still be satisfied without all this upheaval doesnt explain your issue, care to elaborate?

"And don't worry about any health issues from the products of combustion either, they're "not your problem""

I dont thanks since we have worked hard to reduce the damage to vastly below the benefit.

"Renewables are cheaper than other forms of generation"

A claim which as I already clearly showed is bunkum.

"as well as being significantly less damaging."

Certainly far from proven.

@codejunky thanks for the reply!

I was trying to make the point that the grid is not fit for purpose anymore, and that we need to decouple generation from consumption.

There are battery technologies that are cheaper and better suited to grid-scale storage, as well as other storage mediums such as salt. That way we could stop paying folk to switch off windfarms when we don't need the energy. I think I read that they have been paid around £1.5 billion this year to switch off alone. That would go some ways to plug the gap.

I totally agree that there is madness going on in the world of nuclear. Why does the UK have to take an already proven reactor design and increase cost by many billions?

We need to plan for the future and not just right now and for profit. Energy generation is not the only sector this is true for. Too many knee jerk reactions for political gain and votes, in my humble opinion.

As for fish discos... What the actual? Off to write some funky fish tunes...

to save 0.08 of a salmon per year

The Severn isn't a renowned salmon river. I wonder why the salmon numbers are being bandied around, hmm? To achieve peak ludicrous?

(Aside: Severn nuclear plants have always had fish farms on their outflows.)

Imagine how much it is per penguin!

Ludicrous... or maybe it's just that there isn't yet a sensible plan for cooling.

I was right with you until this point. The grid is maintained and worked well. Then the new religion took over demanding windfarms and solar that do not work the way we are used to generating energy. We used to generate the energy we needed, where it was needed and reliably.

We'll just carry on burning coal and Russian gas then. Sure. Fine. No problem. Gas and oil are famously cheap and Russia/OPEC have never cut production to cause major oil-shocks that have shattered the world economy. This idea of moving to domestically generated renewable energy with no paid inputs and predictable maintenance costs is totally unnecessary!

The reason energy prices are high are down to a combination of Herr Putin, the insane way the UK energy market is structured and the failure by NG to build interconnects concurent with highland windfarm construction so that we have the capacity to ship power down to England - with the result we're now paying windfarms to shut down when the Scottish grid is saturated. That's not the fault of the windfarms - it's the fault of government for dragging their heels on infrastructure (of all sorts).

spend over £700 million for a fish disco to save 0.08 of a salmon per year?

Nobody saw that, and neither did you. HP-C's total budget for protecting marine life is ~£700m. Of which the acoustic deterrent/"fish disco" bit is £50m. You can argue about the necessity of that, but it's not costing £700m. It's <10% of the total environmental protection budget.

@rg287

"We'll just carry on burning coal and Russian gas then. Sure. Fine. No problem."

I dont have a problem with that. Instead we shut down the coal plants that we relied upon each winter. We keep using gas anyway because of wind and solar generators.

"Gas and oil are famously cheap and Russia/OPEC have never cut production to cause major oil-shocks that have shattered the world economy."

Very cheap. Thanks to fracking it is even cheaper and not under the thumb of OPEC.

"This idea of moving to domestically generated renewable energy with no paid inputs and predictable maintenance costs is totally unnecessary!"

You are paying for the inputs? Wind and solar is free as oil is also free. It the using it as energy that costs (and in unreliables case a lot!) and oil/gas/coal/nuclear are a store of energy that can be deployed as needed. Wind and solar have no storage, you need to add that separately AND have a reliable backup such as gas to fill the gaps up to 100%.

"The reason energy prices are high are down to a combination of Herr Putin"

Putin didnt stop selling. In fact Russian gas was selling cheaper as the Chinese and India found (and sold on to the west after marking it up).

"failure by NG to build interconnects concurent with highland windfarm construction so that we have the capacity to ship power down to England - with the result we're now paying windfarms to shut down when the Scottish grid is saturated. That's not the fault of the windfarms - it's the fault of government for dragging their heels on infrastructure (of all sorts)."

Since there is an interconnector problem why did so many wind turbines get built up there? After spaffing billions we need to spaff billions to keep spaffing billions on the next problem of trying to make the unreliables work. At the same time build actual generation (gas btw) to back these things up. The costs add up. And of course paying for the turbines to stop generating. We know how to produce power so we shouldnt have such a shortage of capacity nor such high prices.

"That's not the fault of the windfarms - it's the fault of government for dragging their heels on infrastructure (of all sorts)."

I place plenty blame on the gov for our situation.

"Nobody saw that, and neither did you. HP-C's total budget for protecting marine life is ~£700m. Of which the acoustic deterrent/"fish disco" bit is £50m. You can argue about the necessity of that, but it's not costing £700m. It's <10% of the total environmental protection budget."

The disco is £50m but the total cost of the measures is £700m to save very little-

https://www.irishtimes.com/world/uk/2025/12/03/fish-disco-freakout-starmer-looks-to-change-tune-on-obstacles-to-industrial-investment/

codejunky> We keep using gas anyway

Ah yes, or "unreliables" as you call them.

Two simultaneous failures at gas plants nearly took out the UK grid. A near miss. Terrible.

"Hell did you see the news that the Hinkley nuclear power station we badly need has to spend over £700 million for a fish disco to save 0.08 of a salmon per year?"

Yes, I did. But then I looked beyond the click-bait headline for any evidence presented and, what do you know, there was none. Attention-grabbing headline, though. Social media would be proud of it.

Perhaps you have demonstrated that rage-bait does its job with those of little thinking.

"Then the new religion took over demanding windfarms and solar..."

Perhaps those who put their fingers in their ears and sing "La-La-La, no problems, just trust magic" are those really taken over by a new religion. Although ostriches were arguably adherents a long while ago.

In the early 2000s a US economist calculated the cost of transitioning to carbon-neutral energy (*). A lot. About 15 years later he did the sums again and, surprise, it had increased substantially (doubled or more?) because of little action taken. It seems to be the fashion amongst most current journalists to talk about the cost of transitioning to green energy but rarely to mention the rising cost of not transitioning.

Money will talk, eventually. There are an increasing number of places where property is no longer insurable because of increasing flood risks. A year or so ago a radio programme looked at exactly this. I recall one Florida resident with a $250K property saying that his latest annual insurance bill was $100K, with no guarantee he would be able to get insurance at all the next time round. A pub owner in the UK had been flooded for the third time in recent years and couldn't get insurance so lived on hope for future luck.

(*) Whether nuclear fusion energy counts as green is debatable. Many radioactive waste products must be safely stored for many thousands of years.

Although ostriches were arguably adherents a long while ago.

Careful, they'll be quoting how few ostriches in the UK are saved by nuclear power wildlife protection feature if you bring them up.

Weel it's nae whisky their using.

As long as they dinnae drain Campletown Loch, I hav'nae problem wi' this!

Campbeltown Loch?

Oh how I wish you were whisky....

But they won't after all, Finland is run for its populous. UK is run for whoever comes up with the biggest bung.

Finland took the excess heat from their datacenters and made it available locally for the populous to use. Of course this could happen here but it wouldn't be free of course. It seems Finland has some of the cheapest energy costs in the world. Whereas Scotlands energy is sent south to keep London prices cheap, and yes, to the wags with fuck all better to do than look this up, it might be about 10p per kw/h but its still energy that was generated in Scotland. Why not build your own nuclear reactors, say, Mayfair or Belgravia, I don't really mind. While we think about that, how about moving your nuclear weapons and piss the radioactivity over Englands waters?

So, given that AI is going to remove so many jobs etc, who the hell is left to pay the subscriptions to use the services that they provide, or hasn't that been considered beyond the various currency symbols in the eyes of the worlds greedmeisters?

Upvote, downvote, I really don't give a shit.

...we get the burden on our infrastructure and some fugly blots on the landscape in exchange for a relatively few jobs and little payback to the local economy, and the high-quality jobs and prosperity it's supposed to enable are primarily located in England and elsewhere.

"Sir" Kier Starmer said he was going to override Nimbyism to allow development for (e.g.) his delusion of AI-fuelled prosperity, but it seems that's to stop others complaining about putting it in *their* "backyards" rather than being willing to put it in his.

Scotland's just a big empty mass of mountains and nice and far away, isn't it? Might lose the vote of a couple of crofters, but doesn't matter so long as the "Red" Wall's kept on-side...

Is The Register going to use the loch as the unit of measurement for power? It would be a suitable choice to sit alongside the Wales, the giraffe, London bus, etc.