Belfast South and Mid Down
Belfast South and Mid Down has no significant clean power approved and waiting to be built, and none running. 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. Northern Ireland is on the all-Ireland grid, so Britain's grid bottlenecks do not reach bills here in the same way.
here
grid
The waiting list
Every approved, unbuilt project
| Site | Technology | Enough for | Capacity | Approved | Waiting |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ballynahinch Road | Wind Onshore | 200 homes | 0.2 MW | 2021-09 | 4.9 yrs |
Batteries
| Site | Size | Status | While discharging |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lisnabreeny Road | 36 MW | approved, not built 2019 | could supply ≈126,000 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 →
What has Claire Hanna said about the grid in Parliament? Search Hansard →