The night Storm Boelo blew Britain's Balancing Mechanism out of options

NESO paid almost every far-north wind farm to stop, then used emergency powers on one in Caithness, only the twelfth such order since 2023.

20:02, Sunday 25 October

Storm Boelo reached the far north of Scotland on Sunday morning. Gusts hit 84 miles an hour at Stornoway and 75 at Wick. By the evening the worst had passed, but it was still blowing a gale across Caithness and Sutherland.

At 20:02, NESO, which runs Britain's electricity system, gave an emergency instruction. Its account the next day was brief: it had issued "an emergency instruction to one generator for 50MW in order to balance the system". It didn't say which one.

It was Camster I, a 50 MW wind farm in Caithness. It was ordered to stop generating at 20:02 and allowed back at 05:00 on Monday morning. It complied: from 20:30 it generated about 1.5 MW, against the 41 MW it had told NESO it could produce.