Easington
Easington has 102 MW of clean power (all solar) approved and still not built: enough to supply a year's electricity to 37,000 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 42,384 homes. There is also 28 MW of wind running here on the local network. If that gets switched off, no national record shows it.
here
The waiting list
Every approved, unbuilt project
| Site | Technology | Enough for | Capacity | Approved | Waiting |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sheraton Hall Solar Farm | Solar Photovoltaics | 18,000 homes | 49.9 MW | 2023-12 | 2.7 yrs |
| Hawthorn Pit -Solar Farm | Solar Photovoltaics | 18,000 homes | 49.9 MW | 2023-05 | 3.2 yrs |
| B H K UK Davy Drive - Solar Panels | Solar Photovoltaics | 500 homes | 1.3 MW | 2022-07 | 4.1 yrs |
| East Durham College, Willerby Grove - Solar panels | Solar Photovoltaics | 200 homes | 0.5 MW | 2023-06 | 3.1 yrs |
| Lighthouse View Road - Solar Panels | Solar Photovoltaics | 100 homes | 0.3 MW | 2024-02 | 2.5 yrs |
| Morrisons, Murton - Solar Photovoltaic Array | Solar Photovoltaics | 100 homes | 0.2 MW | 2022-01 | 4.6 yrs |
| Peterlee Leisure Centre - Solar Panels | Solar Photovoltaics | 100 homes | 0.1 MW | 2022-02 | 4.5 yrs |
Plus 2 more approved within the last two years.
Batteries
| Site | Size | Status | While discharging |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hawthorn Pit Green Energy Park - Battery Energy Storage System | 1,000 MW | in planning | could supply ≈3,504,000 homes |
| Carrs Farm, South Hetton - Battery Energy Storage System | 200 MW | in planning | could supply ≈701,000 homes |
| Woodlands, Windermere Road - Battery Energy Storage | 90 MW | in planning | could supply ≈315,000 homes |
| Hallfield Farm, Easington - Battery Storage | 57 MW | in planning | could supply ≈200,000 homes |
| Hawthorn Grid Site - Battery Storage | 49 MW | 2022 | could supply ≈172,000 homes |
| Salters Lane - Solar Panels | 18 MW | in planning | could supply ≈63,000 homes |
| Benridge Farm, Fillpoke Lane - Battery Energy Storage System | 12 MW | in planning | could supply ≈42,000 homes |
| Harehill Farm, Haswell Plough - Solar Farm & Battery Energy Storage | 10 MW | refused 2025 | could supply ≈36,000 homes |
| Hackworth Road, North West Industrial Estate - Solar Panels | 10 MW | in planning | could supply ≈35,000 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 →
What has Grahame Morris said about the grid in Parliament? Search Hansard →