No.278 of 650 · approved, not built MP: Ed Miliband (Labour) England

Doncaster North

Doncaster North has 3.8 MW of clean power (all solar) approved and still not built: enough to supply a year's electricity to 1,400 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, £3.9m across the constituency's 42,487 homes.

Not visible
here
16 MW of wind is running in this constituency, but it sits on the local network rather than the national grid — so if it is paid to switch off, no national record shows it. That is why this seat has no figure here: not because nothing happens, but because nobody publishes it. The £ figure for this seat is a floor, not a zero.
3.8 MW
of clean power — all solar — approved and still not built, enough to supply a year's electricity to 1,400 homes. Approved at least two years ago; waiting on the grid, not on planning. That is 0.2× the renewable capacity actually running here.
4 projects · planning database (REPD), July 2026 · how we worked this out
£3.9m
is what the grid gap costs this constituency's 42,487 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
Red House Farm, High Melton - Red House Solar Panels 0.1 MW
4.9 YRS
Red House Farm, High Melton -Solar Panels 0.2 MW
3.9 YRS
Croft Farm, Askern Road - Solar Array & Hydrogen Plant 2.5 MW
3.2 YRS
Doncaster Road, Doncaster Road - Solar Array 1 MW
3.1 YRS

Every approved, unbuilt project

approved 24+ months ago, still not generating · planning database, July 2026
SiteTechnologyEnough forCapacityApprovedWaiting
Croft Farm, Askern Road - Solar Array & Hydrogen PlantSolar Photovoltaics900 homes2.5 MW2023-053.2 yrs
Doncaster Road, Doncaster Road - Solar ArraySolar Photovoltaics400 homes1.0 MW2023-063.1 yrs
Red House Farm, High Melton -Solar PanelsSolar Photovoltaics100 homes0.2 MW2022-093.9 yrs
Red House Farm, High Melton - Red House Solar PanelsSolar Photovoltaics100 homes0.1 MW2021-094.9 yrs

Plus 3 more approved within the last two years.

Batteries

projects of 10 MW and above · planning database, July 2026 · what batteries do →
SiteSizeStatusWhile discharging
Thorpe Marsh Power Station - Battery Energy Storage1,450 MWapproved, not built 2025could supply ≈5,081,000 homes
Thorpe Marsh Power Station, Marsh Lane - Battery Energy Storage1,400 MWapproved, not built 2025could supply ≈4,906,000 homes
The Balk, Almholme - Energy Storage System1,025 MWapproved, not built 2024could supply ≈3,592,000 homes
Fordtead Lane, Thorpe Marsh - Battery Energy Facility180 MWapproved, not built 2024could supply ≈631,000 homes
Butt Lane, Hooton Pagnell Battery Energy Storage30 MWcould supply ≈105,000 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 Ed Miliband said about the grid in Parliament? Search Hansard →

See the full league table Data (JSON)