Scottish wind farm operator agrees £5.53M redress payment

Dorenell Windfarm Limited (DWL) has agreed to make a payment of £5.53 million into Ofgem’s Redress Fund, after accepting that it breached energy market rules. 
DWL generates electricity in Northern Scotland. Since 2020, DWL has regularly been required to reduce its output due to the physical limits of the transmission system which restrict the amount of power which can be moved from the wind farm’s location in the North of Scotland to demand centres further south. Market rules prohibit generators from charging excessive prices in such circumstances, helping to keep consumer bills down.  
But Ofgem considered that DWL charged excessive prices to reduce output where this was required to keep the system balanced and the breach pushed up costs for consumers.
DWL now accepts Ofgem’s position although it told Ofgem that at the time of submitting the bid prices, it had considered that it was compliant. It maintains that the breach was not deliberate and was not in any way motivated by the intention to obtain an excessive benefit.
Ofgem said that DWL has now committed to making changes to its bid pricing policy to ensure a breach does not happen again.
This is the fourth action that Ofgem has taken against electricity generation companies since the start of 2023 in relation to breaches of licence conditions. Other cases were: 
• Drax Pumped Storage Limited (£6.12 million paid into the Redress Fund)
• SSE Generation Limited (£9.78 million paid into the Redress Fund), and 
• EP SHB Limited (£23.63 million paid into the Redress Fund)