No.468 of 650 · approved, not built MP: Phil Brickell (Labour) England

Bolton West

Bolton West has 2 MW of renewables running, enough for 800 homes over a year, and nothing large waiting in the planning queue. Britain's grid bottlenecks still add to bills here: about £92 a year per household, £3.8m across the constituency's 41,253 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.

how we worked this out

0.6 MW

of clean power — all solar — approved and still not built, enough to supply a year's electricity to 200 homes. Approved at least two years ago; waiting on the grid, not on planning. That is 0.3× the renewable capacity actually running here.

3 projects · planning database (REPD), July 2026 · how we worked this out

£3.8m

is what the grid gap costs this constituency's 41,253 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

3 of 3 waiting projects · years since approval

Tesco, Mansell Way 0.5 MW

5.7 YRS

Westhoughton Community Leisure Centre - Solar Photovoltaic System 0.2 MW

4.9 YRS

Amazon UK Plot E1, Bridgewater Avenue - Solar photovoltaic panels

4.1 YRS

Every approved, unbuilt project

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

Site	Technology	Enough for	Capacity	Approved	Waiting
Tesco, Mansell Way	Solar Photovoltaics	200 homes	0.5 MW	2020-11	5.7 yrs
Westhoughton Community Leisure Centre - Solar Photovoltaic System	Solar Photovoltaics	100 homes	0.2 MW	2021-09	4.9 yrs
Amazon UK Plot E1, Bridgewater Avenue - Solar photovoltaic panels	Solar Photovoltaics	—	— MW	2022-06	4.1 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
Slack Lane, Westhoughton - Battery Energy Storage System	45 MW	approved, not built 2024	could supply ≈158,000 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 Phil Brickell said about the grid in Parliament? Search Hansard →

See the full league table Data (JSON)