Central Ayrshire
Central Ayrshire has 51 MW of clean power (almost all solar) approved and still not built: enough to supply a year's electricity to 20,000 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, £3.8m across the constituency's 41,117 homes.
here
The waiting list
Every approved, unbuilt project
| Site | Technology | Enough for | Capacity | Approved | Waiting |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Glaxosmithkline Shewalton Road | Solar Photovoltaics | 7,200 homes | 19.9 MW | 2019-06 | 7.1 yrs |
| Wee Minnemoer, Millport - Solar Farm & Battery Storage | Solar Photovoltaics | 6,900 homes | 19.0 MW | 2024-02 | 2.5 yrs |
| Shewalton Landfill Solar Farm | Solar Photovoltaics | 1,800 homes | 5.0 MW | 2023-06 | 3.1 yrs |
| Shewalton Road | Wind Onshore | 2,600 homes | 3.0 MW | 2019-05 | 7.3 yrs |
| Meadowhead Sewage Treatment Plant, Meadowhead Road - Solar Array | Solar Photovoltaics | 600 homes | 1.6 MW | 2024-06 | 2.2 yrs |
| Ardagh Glass Limited - Solar Panels | Solar Photovoltaics | 400 homes | 1.0 MW | 2021-08 | 5.0 yrs |
| Sainsburys Stores Limited, Ayr Road - Solar Panels | Solar Photovoltaics | 200 homes | 0.4 MW | 2023-09 | 2.9 yrs |
| Gailes Pumping Station, Gailes - PhotoVoltaic Solar Panels | Solar Photovoltaics | 100 homes | 0.3 MW | 2023-08 | 2.9 yrs |
| Merck Kgaa, Second Avenue - Solar Panels | Solar Photovoltaics | 100 homes | 0.2 MW | 2023-07 | 3.1 yrs |
| Symington Place, Riverside Business Park - Solar Panels | Solar Photovoltaics | 100 homes | 0.2 MW | 2023-02 | 3.4 yrs |
| Enterkine House, Annbank - Solar Panels | Solar Photovoltaics | 100 homes | 0.2 MW | 2023-10 | 2.8 yrs |
Plus 3 more approved within the last two years.
Batteries
| Site | Size | Status | While discharging |
|---|---|---|---|
| Camsiscan Farm, Craigie - Battery Energy Storage System | 350 MW | approved, not built 2024 | could supply ≈1,226,000 homes |
| Belston Battery Storage | 150 MW | approved, not built 2025 | could supply ≈526,000 homes |
| Kilwinning Battery Storage | 100 MW | approved, not built 2025 | could supply ≈350,000 homes |
| Holmston Road - Battery Storage Facility | 50 MW | being built 2023 | could supply ≈175,000 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 Alan Gemmell said about the grid in Parliament? Search Hansard →