No.101 of 650 · approved, not built MP: Nick Smith (Labour) Wales

Blaenau Gwent and Rhymney

Blaenau Gwent and Rhymney has 66 MW of clean power (onshore wind and solar) approved and still not built: enough to supply a year's electricity to 42,000 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 42,525 homes.

Not visible
here
No big wind farm on the national grid is mapped to this constituency, so no switch-off payments show here in national data. Smaller wind farms on the local grid can still be paid to switch off — invisibly. The £ figure for this seat is a floor, not a zero.
66 MW
of clean power — onshore wind and solar — approved and still not built, enough to supply a year's electricity to 42,000 homes — about as many homes as this constituency has. Approved at least two years ago; waiting on the grid, not on planning. That is 2.9× the renewable capacity actually running here.
7 projects · 36 MW onshore wind, 31 MW solar · planning database (REPD), July 2026 · how we worked this out
£3.9m
is what the grid gap costs this constituency's 42,525 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 7 waiting projects · years since approval
Tafarnaubach Industrial Estate 0.9 MW
7.3 YRS
Rassau Industrial Estate 1.5 MW
7.0 YRS
Wauntysswg Farm, near Tredagar 30 MW
7.0 YRS
Pen-Yr-Heol Farm, Hollybush
5.2 YRS
Roseheyworth Business Park - Solar Array & Battery Storage
4.4 YRS
Rassau Industrial Estate, Rassau - Battery Energy Storage
3.0 YRS

Every approved, unbuilt project

approved 24+ months ago, still not generating · planning database, July 2026
SiteTechnologyEnough forCapacityApprovedWaiting
Mynydd Carn Wind FarmWind Onshore30,000 homes34.0 MW2024-032.4 yrs
Wauntysswg Farm, near TredagarSolar Photovoltaics11,000 homes30.0 MW2019-087.0 yrs
Rassau Industrial EstateWind Onshore1,300 homes1.5 MW2019-077.0 yrs
Tafarnaubach Industrial EstateSolar Photovoltaics300 homes0.9 MW2019-047.3 yrs
Pen-Yr-Heol Farm, HollybushWind Onshore— MW2021-055.2 yrs
Roseheyworth Business Park - Solar Array & Battery StorageSolar Photovoltaics— MW2022-034.4 yrs
Rassau Industrial Estate, Rassau - Battery Energy StorageSolar Photovoltaics— MW2023-073.0 yrs

Plus 1 more approved within the last two years.

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 Nick Smith said about the grid in Parliament? Search Hansard →

See the full league table Data (JSON)