No.65 of 650 · approved, not built MP: Olly Glover (Liberal Democrat) England

Didcot and Wantage

Didcot and Wantage has 103 MW of clean power (all solar) approved and still not built: enough to supply a year's electricity to 37,000 homes. Britain's grid bottlenecks still add to bills here: about £92 a year per household, £4.1m across the constituency's 44,055 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.
103 MW
of clean power — all solar — approved and still not built, enough to supply a year's electricity to 37,000 homes. Approved at least two years ago; waiting on the grid, not on planning. That is 0.9× the renewable capacity actually running here.
8 projects · planning database (REPD), July 2026 · how we worked this out
£4.1m
is what the grid gap costs this constituency's 44,055 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 8 waiting projects · years since approval
Rutherford Appleton Laboratory 1.6 MW
5.1 YRS
Nuneham Courtenay Solar Farm & Battery Storage Facility 50 MW
4.6 YRS
Building B1, Culham Science Centre, Clifton Hampden - Solar Photovoltaic Panels 0.2 MW
4.0 YRS
Building M1, Culham Science Centre, Clifton Hampden - Solar Panels 0.2 MW
4.0 YRS
Rebellion Film Studios, Milton Road - Solar Panels 0.9 MW
3.6 YRS
Culham Science Centre, Building E4, E5 & E6, Clifton Hampden - Solar Panels 0.2 MW
3.2 YRS

Every approved, unbuilt project

approved 24+ months ago, still not generating · planning database, July 2026
SiteTechnologyEnough forCapacityApprovedWaiting
Nuneham Courtenay Solar Farm & Battery Storage FacilitySolar Photovoltaics18,000 homes49.9 MW2022-014.6 yrs
Barnstaples FarmSolar Photovoltaics18,000 homes49.9 MW2024-022.4 yrs
Rutherford Appleton LaboratorySolar Photovoltaics600 homes1.6 MW2021-075.1 yrs
Rebellion Film Studios, Milton Road - Solar PanelsSolar Photovoltaics300 homes0.9 MW2023-013.6 yrs
Sainsburys Supermarkets, Central Drive - Solar PanelsSolar Photovoltaics100 homes0.4 MW2024-032.4 yrs
Building B1, Culham Science Centre, Clifton Hampden - Solar Photovoltaic PanelsSolar Photovoltaics100 homes0.2 MW2022-084.0 yrs
Culham Science Centre, Building E4, E5 & E6, Clifton Hampden - Solar PanelsSolar Photovoltaics100 homes0.2 MW2023-053.2 yrs
Building M1, Culham Science Centre, Clifton Hampden - Solar PanelsSolar Photovoltaics100 homes0.2 MW2022-084.0 yrs

Plus 7 more approved within the last two years.

Batteries

projects of 10 MW and above · planning database, July 2026 · what batteries do →
SiteSizeStatusWhile discharging
Culham Science Centre, Clifton Hampden - Battery Storage Facility500 MWapproved, not built 2025could supply ≈1,752,000 homes
Appleford - Battery Energy Storage300 MWapproved, not built 2025could supply ≈1,051,000 homes
Cowley Substation, Blackberry Lane - Battery Storage Energy System200 MWapproved, not built 2025could supply ≈701,000 homes
Burcot Solar Farm50 MWapproved, not built 2025could 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 →

Read the full method, including everything we cannot see →

What has Olly Glover said about the grid in Parliament? Search Hansard →

See the full league table Data (JSON)