No.150 of 650 · approved, not built MP: Kirsteen Sullivan (Labour (Co-op)) Scotland

Bathgate and Linlithgow

Bathgate and Linlithgow has 46 MW of clean power (mostly solar) approved and still not built: enough to supply a year's electricity to 24,000 homes. When the wires are too full to carry the power, Britain pays wind farms to switch off instead. No wind farm here is paid that way — almost all of it goes to wind farms in Scotland. That cost is shared across every bill in Britain, so households here pay for it too: about £92 a year per household, £3.9m across the constituency's 42,817 homes.

Not visible
here

8.5 MW of wind is running in this constituency, but it sits on the local network rather than the national grid — so if it is paid to switch off, no national record shows it. That is why this seat has no figure here: not because nothing happens, but because nobody publishes it. The £ figure for this seat is a floor, not a zero.

how we worked this out

46 MW

of clean power — mostly solar — approved and still not built, enough to supply a year's electricity to 24,000 homes. Approved at least two years ago; waiting on the grid, not on planning. That is 4.7× the renewable capacity actually running here.

6 projects · 31 MW solar, 15 MW onshore wind · planning database (REPD), July 2026 · how we worked this out

£3.9m

is what the grid gap costs this constituency's 42,817 households in a year between them — £92 each, about 51 days of one home's electricity.

The £92 per household is a national figure — identical in every GB seat. Only the seat total varies, with the number of households · NESO · how we worked this out

The waiting list

6 of 6 waiting projects · years since approval

Blackburn Waste Water Treatrment, Redhouse Road - Solar Panels 0.3 MW

3.8 YRS

Bathgate Waste Water Treatment - Solar Panels 0.3 MW

3.8 YRS

Heartland Terrace, Heartlands - Solar Photovoltaic Panels 0.5 MW

3.6 YRS

The Vu, Roscam House - Solar Photovoltaics Array

2.7 YRS

Duddingston Solar Farm and Battery Storage 30 MW

2.3 YRS

Drumduff Wind Farm Extension 15 MW

2.3 YRS

Every approved, unbuilt project

approved 24+ months ago, still not generating · planning database, July 2026

Site	Technology	Enough for	Capacity	Approved	Waiting
Duddingston Solar Farm and Battery Storage	Solar Photovoltaics	11,000 homes	29.9 MW	2024-04	2.3 yrs
Drumduff Wind Farm Extension	Wind Onshore	13,000 homes	15.0 MW	2024-04	2.3 yrs
Heartland Terrace, Heartlands - Solar Photovoltaic Panels	Solar Photovoltaics	200 homes	0.5 MW	2022-12	3.6 yrs
Blackburn Waste Water Treatrment, Redhouse Road - Solar Panels	Solar Photovoltaics	100 homes	0.3 MW	2022-09	3.8 yrs
Bathgate Waste Water Treatment - Solar Panels	Solar Photovoltaics	100 homes	0.3 MW	2022-10	3.8 yrs
The Vu, Roscam House - Solar Photovoltaics Array	Solar Photovoltaics	—	— MW	2023-12	2.7 yrs

Plus 2 more approved within the last two years.

Batteries

projects of 10 MW and above · planning database, July 2026 · what batteries do →

Site	Size	Status	While discharging
Pond Industrial Park, Whitburn Road - Pond Battery Storage	200 MW	approved, not built 2025	could supply ≈701,000 homes
Middlerigg - Battery Energy Storage	50 MW	approved, not built 2025	could supply ≈175,000 homes
Duddingston Solar Farm and Battery Storage	20 MW	approved, not built 2024	could supply ≈70,000 homes

What this page does not show

Smaller wind farms on the local grid are also switched off; national data does not show it, so the £ figure here is a floor, not a zero. Offshore wind is counted nationally, never per seat. The planning database can run a quarter behind reality.

Electricity does not travel from a particular project to particular houses. Everything generated goes into the national grid and everyone draws from that shared pool, so "enough for X homes" is a way of sizing the electricity — not a claim that these homes would be powered by this site. Battery storage is counted separately from generation: it moves power in time rather than making it.

Planning statuses come from the government's planning database (REPD), which records what was decided and when, but not why. Where a project was refused we say so and name the authority; for the reasons, look up the planning reference on that council's own register. How to check any figure on this page →

Read the full method, including everything we cannot see →

What has Kirsteen Sullivan said about the grid in Parliament? Search Hansard →

See the full league table Data (JSON)