No.76 of 650 · approved, not built MP: Lola McEvoy (Labour) England

Darlington

Darlington has 84 MW of clean power (all solar) approved and still not built: enough to supply a year's electricity to 31,000 homes. Britain's grid bottlenecks still add to bills here: about £92 a year per household, £4.1m across the constituency's 44,411 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

84 MW

of clean power — all solar — approved and still not built, enough to supply a year's electricity to 31,000 homes. Approved at least two years ago; waiting on the grid, not on planning. That is 13.6× the renewable capacity actually running here.

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

£4.1m

is what the grid gap costs this constituency's 44,411 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 6 waiting projects · years since approval

Park Lane Solar panels 0.4 MW

4.6 YRS

Morrisons - Solar PV system 0.7 MW

4.3 YRS

Whinfield Solar Farm 33 MW

3.8 YRS

Burtree Lane - Solar farm 50 MW

3.6 YRS

Longfield Academy Of Sport - Solar Panels 0.3 MW

2.7 YRS

The Rydal Academy, Rydal Road - 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
Burtree Lane - Solar farm	Solar Photovoltaics	18,000 homes	49.9 MW	2023-01	3.6 yrs
Whinfield Solar Farm	Solar Photovoltaics	12,000 homes	33.0 MW	2022-10	3.8 yrs
Morrisons - Solar PV system	Solar Photovoltaics	300 homes	0.7 MW	2022-04	4.3 yrs
Park Lane Solar panels	Solar Photovoltaics	100 homes	0.4 MW	2022-01	4.6 yrs
Longfield Academy Of Sport - Solar Panels	Solar Photovoltaics	100 homes	0.3 MW	2023-11	2.7 yrs
The Rydal Academy, Rydal Road - Solar Panels	Solar Photovoltaics	100 homes	0.2 MW	2024-03	2.4 yrs

Plus 5 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 Lola McEvoy said about the grid in Parliament? Search Hansard →

See the full league table Data (JSON)