No.164 of 650 · approved, not built MP: Graeme Downie (Labour) Scotland

Dunfermline and Dollar

Dunfermline and Dollar has 36 MW of clean power (almost all solar) approved and still not built: enough to supply a year's electricity to 13,000 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, £3.9m across the constituency's 42,688 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

36 MW

of clean power — almost all solar — approved and still not built, enough to supply a year's electricity to 13,000 homes. Approved at least two years ago; waiting on the grid, not on planning. That is 7.1× the renewable capacity actually running here.

3 projects · 36 MW solar, 0.5 MW onshore wind · planning database (REPD), July 2026 · how we worked this out

£3.9m

is what the grid gap costs this constituency's 42,688 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

3 of 3 waiting projects · years since approval

Saline Shaw - Wind Turbine 0.5 MW

4.2 YRS

Dunfermline North - Solar Photovoltaic Array/Battery storage 30 MW

3.1 YRS

Babcock Marine Bldg, Wood Road - Solar Photovoltaic Array 5.6 MW

2.6 YRS

Every approved, unbuilt project

approved 24+ months ago, still not generating · planning database, July 2026

Site	Technology	Enough for	Capacity	Approved	Waiting
Dunfermline North - Solar Photovoltaic Array/Battery storage	Solar Photovoltaics	11,000 homes	29.9 MW	2023-06	3.1 yrs
Babcock Marine Bldg, Wood Road - Solar Photovoltaic Array	Solar Photovoltaics	2,000 homes	5.6 MW	2023-12	2.6 yrs
Saline Shaw - Wind Turbine	Wind Onshore	400 homes	0.5 MW	2022-05	4.2 yrs

Plus 2 more approved within the last two years.

Batteries

projects of 10 MW and above · planning database, July 2026 · what batteries do →

Site	Size	Status	While discharging
Kincardine Grid Services Complex - Energy Storage Facility	400 MW	approved, not built 2022	could supply ≈1,402,000 homes
Kincardine Battery Storage	342 MW	approved, not built 2025	could supply ≈1,198,000 homes
Dunfermline North - Solar Photovoltaic Array/Battery storage	20 MW	being built 2023	could supply ≈70,000 homes
Nettly Burn Renewable Energy Park	15 MW	approved, not built 2026	could supply ≈53,000 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 Graeme Downie said about the grid in Parliament? Search Hansard →

See the full league table Data (JSON)