Nicholas Soames: To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change what constraint payments are; and how much has been paid in respect of such payments in each of the last five years. [123295]

Mr Hayes, Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change: National Grid undertakes a number of activities to fulfil its role of balancing the demand and supply of electricity on the transmission system. One of these activities involves making constraint payments to generators to either increase or decrease their planned output in order to resolve bottlenecks (known as constraints) on the transmission system. This is a competitive market in which National Grid is incentivised to pick the most cost effective way to deliver what is required.

Constraint costs over the last five years are as follows:

Source: National Grid published data

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