Vow to speed up wind farm grid connection

Moves aimed at making it easier to connect renewable energy to the National Grid were announced yesterday.

The Energy and Climate Change Secretary, Ed Miliband, said the shake-up would help new projects waiting for a date to feed electricity into the grid to get out of the "queue" and would particularly help renewable energy such as wind farms.

Around 200 projects are waiting to be connected to the grid with capacity for 60 gigawatts (GW) of new generation – 17 GW from renewable sources.

The Government announced last summer that it wanted to reform the previous "first come first served" system of grid connection, meaning that some wind farms were given connection dates years after they were due to start producing electricity.

Mr Miliband said: "Access to the electricity grid has been one of the key barriers to the generation of renewable energy in this country. We are determined to resolve this issue... We need these new projects hooked up to the grid as soon as they are ready, to help tackle climate change and secure our future energy supplies."