Burnley
Burnley has 1 MW of clean power (all solar) approved and still not built: enough to supply a year's electricity to 400 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, £4.1m across the constituency's 45,122 homes. There is also 38 MW of wind running here on the local network. If that gets switched off, no national record shows it. A 100 MW battery was refused planning here in 2025; while discharging it could have supplied about 350,000 homes.
here
The waiting list
Every approved, unbuilt project
| Site | Technology | Enough for | Capacity | Approved | Waiting |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Safran Nacelles, Bancroft Road - Solar Panels | Solar Photovoltaics | 400 homes | 1.0 MW | 2024-04 | 2.3 yrs |
| Crow Wood, Holme Road - Solar Array | Solar Photovoltaics | — | — MW | 2023-12 | 2.7 yrs |
Plus 1 more approved within the last two years.
Batteries
| Site | Size | Status | While discharging |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Old Vicarage, Reedley - Battery Storage | 100 MW | approved, not built 2025 | could supply ≈350,000 homes |
| Shuttleworth House, Higher Shuttleworth - Battery Energy Storage System | 100 MW | refused 2025 | could supply ≈350,000 homes |
| Padiham - Battery Energy Storage | 100 MW | refused 2024 | could supply ≈350,000 homes |
| Widow Hill, Balderstone Lane - Battery Energy Storage System | 70 MW | being built 2023 | could supply ≈245,000 homes |
| Huncoat Power Station - Battery Storage Facility | 45 MW | refused 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 →
What has Oliver Ryan said about the grid in Parliament? Search Hansard →