No.281 of 650 · approved, not built MP: Yuan Yang (Labour) England

Earley and Woodley

Earley and Woodley has 3.7 MW of clean power (all solar) approved and still not built: enough to supply a year's electricity to 1,300 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, £3.6m across the constituency's 38,905 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.
3.7 MW
of clean power — all solar — approved and still not built, enough to supply a year's electricity to 1,300 homes. Approved at least two years ago; waiting on the grid, not on planning. That is 0.5× the renewable capacity actually running here.
11 projects · planning database (REPD), July 2026 · how we worked this out
£3.6m
is what the grid gap costs this constituency's 38,905 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 11 waiting projects · years since approval
Woodley Library Solar Planels
5.1 YRS
Reading International Business Park - Roof Mounted Solar Panels 0.3 MW
4.6 YRS
Relief Road - Solar Photovoltaic Panels 0.6 MW
4.5 YRS
Thames Valley Park Drive, Earley - Photovoltaic Solar panels 0.2 MW
4.2 YRS
Arena Business Park, Acre Road- Photovoltaics Solar Panels 0.3 MW
3.3 YRS
Reading International Business Park, Relief Road - 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
Suttons Park Avenue, Suttons Business Park - Solar PVSolar Photovoltaics500 homes1.3 MW2023-083.0 yrs
Relief Road - Solar Photovoltaic PanelsSolar Photovoltaics200 homes0.6 MW2022-024.5 yrs
Starline Holdings Technology, Island Road - Solar PanelsSolar Photovoltaics200 homes0.5 MW2024-032.4 yrs
Voco Reading Hotel, Shooters Way - Solar PanelsSolar Photovoltaics100 homes0.4 MW2024-032.4 yrs
Arena Business Park, Acre Road- Photovoltaics Solar PanelsSolar Photovoltaics100 homes0.3 MW2023-043.3 yrs
Reading International Business Park - Roof Mounted Solar PanelsSolar Photovoltaics100 homes0.3 MW2021-124.6 yrs
Reading International Business Park, Relief Road - Solar PanelsSolar Photovoltaics100 homes0.2 MW2023-053.2 yrs
Thames Valley Park Drive, Earley - Photovoltaic Solar panelsSolar Photovoltaics100 homes0.2 MW2022-054.2 yrs
Woodley Library Solar PlanelsSolar Photovoltaics— MW2021-065.1 yrs
David Lloyd Leisure, Thames Valley Park Drive - Solar PanelsSolar Photovoltaics— MW2023-063.1 yrs
Reading International Business Park - Car Port & Solar PanelsSolar Photovoltaics— MW2024-012.6 yrs

Plus 1 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 Yuan Yang said about the grid in Parliament? Search Hansard →

See the full league table Data (JSON)