No.133 of 650 · approved, not built MP: Sir James Cleverly (Conservative) England

Braintree

Braintree has 51 MW of clean power (all solar) approved and still not built: enough to supply a year's electricity to 18,000 homes. Britain's grid bottlenecks still add to bills here: about £92 a year per household, £4.0m across the constituency's 43,166 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

51 MW

of clean power — all solar — approved and still not built, enough to supply a year's electricity to 18,000 homes. Approved at least two years ago; waiting on the grid, not on planning. That is 0.7× the renewable capacity actually running here.

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

£4.0m

is what the grid gap costs this constituency's 43,166 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

4 of 4 waiting projects · years since approval

Four Elms, Bardfield Road - Solar Array 0.3 MW

3.6 YRS

Felsted School Road - Solar Photovoltaic Farm & Battery storage 50 MW

2.9 YRS

Antislip Antiwear Treads International, Swinbourne Drive - Solar Panels 0.1 MW

2.8 YRS

Hedingham School, Christmas Field - Solar Panels 0.2 MW

2.4 YRS

Every approved, unbuilt project

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

Site	Technology	Enough for	Capacity	Approved	Waiting
Felsted School Road - Solar Photovoltaic Farm & Battery storage	Solar Photovoltaics	18,000 homes	49.9 MW	2023-09	2.9 yrs
Four Elms, Bardfield Road - Solar Array	Solar Photovoltaics	100 homes	0.3 MW	2023-01	3.6 yrs
Hedingham School, Christmas Field - Solar Panels	Solar Photovoltaics	100 homes	0.2 MW	2024-03	2.4 yrs
Antislip Antiwear Treads International, Swinbourne Drive - Solar Panels	Solar Photovoltaics	100 homes	0.1 MW	2023-10	2.8 yrs

Plus 4 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
Braintree Road, Cressing - Battery Storage	57 MW	being built 2023	could supply ≈200,000 homes
Surmer Hall, Church Walk - Solar Farm & Battery Storage	22 MW	approved, not built 2024	could supply ≈77,000 homes
Claredown Farm	20 MW	operating 2017	could supply ≈70,000 homes
Slamseys Energy Storage	10 MW	being built 2017	could supply ≈35,000 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 Sir James Cleverly said about the grid in Parliament? Search Hansard →

See the full league table Data (JSON)