Wind farms were paid more than £100 million last year to switch off their turbines and NOT produce electricity, the Telegraph can disclose.

The payments - equivalent to £2 million a week - were made to the big energy firms that own the giant wind farms.

Incredibly, the wind farms receive on average 40 per cent more cash when they are switched off than when they are producing electricity, according to an analysis of official figures.

The think tank which carried out the study said it was “a scandal” that the big energy companies were more profitable when turned off.

The turbines have to be shut down at certain times because Britain’s electricity network is unable to cope with the power they produce. The wind farm owners then receive compensation - called ‘constraint payments’ - for not producing electricity.

The money is paid out by the National Grid but is ultimately charged to consumers and added on to electricity bills.

The scale of the constraint payments has ballooned in the past five years, according to the Renewable Energy Foundation (REF), which carried out the research.